Palace Songs
Hope

THE REVIEW

Only six tracks. Fragile like snowflakes. They settle in the heart, and disappear. They could have been something else, perhaps. A snowman, probably. But no, they are just six snowflakes that gently settle on your face. And as they melt, they streak your face like a tear. A timeless, senseless pain. Six fragile, wintry, dark and trembling tracks. The voice is unmistakably that of Will Oldham. The sounds are the trembling, suffocating, and dark sounds of the early Palace. Everything else is just precariousness. From Leonard Cohen's "Winter Lady" (Travelling lady stay a while/Until the night is over/I'm just a station on your way/I know I'm not your lover), to the specter of boredom and time that doesn't pass in "Christmastime In The Mountains". Where the ghosts of repressed and unspent anger (We need an enemy/I'm saving all my rage for you) are eerily reflected in a darkly fairytale landscape of dreams trampled like snow.

Six bittersweet indie-folk candies, from the dazzling opening of "Agnes, Queen Of Sorrow" - which shamelessly begs for a boundless need for love - to the twisted and thorny lyrics of "All Gone, All Gone". Where introspection and hermeticism grip you in a breathless clutch of cold and ice. To culminate in "Werner's Last Blues To Blokbuster", whose lyrics would certainly not be out of place among the masterpieces of contemporary poetry. And just that She said: I washed my hands of him/But he thought I was washing my hair, to wonder: but then why is this album called "Hope"? Maybe because hope belongs to those who are alone, who have no one. While trust belongs to those who have someone by their side. Because it's always wrong to tell someone who is hurting: Hope, maybe tomorrow you won't feel this way anymore. Instead, we need to say: Trust. Because I'm here. Now.