Chapel Club
Palace

THE REVIEW

Land of Albion: land of archetypes and land of derivatives.

That the Londoners Chapel Club have dragged it out since 2010 by releasing their delightful singles ("O Maybe I''", "All The Eastern Girls'') sporadically, stirring up the classic media buzz that always surrounds these advertising stunts for young rising indie stars, is well-known by now.

That they, as derivatives as they are, have come up with an album, their first "Palace", which is very good, at times excellent, is not obvious. Not at all. Dream-pop rooted indie, followers of a certain romantic ‘wave’ never fully forgotten (The Smiths, Echo & The Bunnymen, Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine), Chapel Club ride the wave of shoegaze epigonism with character and personality; a shoegaze, however, not to be considered in its deepest musical sense: devastating feedback and walls of sound à la My Bloody Valentine, but rather to be understood closer to the more versatile Ride style of the '90s.

11 melancholic tracks halfway between sacred and profane, sometimes wordy in the lyrics or in the excessive use of metaphors and intimacy but melodically well-structured. Nebulous, foggy, and shaded by foamy latent guitars, these 11 tracks slide watery in a pond of damp emotions and lost bass lines slowly blending into a swamp of Morrisseyan echoes (the beautiful "The Shore" and "Fine Light") as present as the dark vocal and sound hangovers from the most recent ‘new/new wave’ strand of various Editors and White Lies ("Surfacing" and "White Knight Position" seem to be taken from 'To Lose Myself') or the more recent, liquefied Arctic Monkeys (see the swampy and dreamlike "Paper Thin") where the vocal register seems to come from the more sentimental Alex Turner.

Was there a need, I ask? Perhaps not, you might say, but sometimes it's so nice to enjoy a bit of ‘revival’. 3.5 because in the end, we like all this wavering between sound reminiscences. 3.5 because after all, we've always been wavers to the core.