by Elise Barbin (@elisecbarb)
It’s in the name. Zany and true to form, Palberta5000 connotes a souped up version of what makes Palberta, Palberta and that’s what they deliver, no loss for stripes. Plucking elements from girl groups, 80s twee, no wave, 20teens basement DIY, and beyond, Ani Ivry-Block, Lily Konigsberg, and Nina Ryser take their keyed up, frenetic style and elasticize it into buoyant, taut, fully fledged pop songs.
Part studied, part self-learned, with any holes (over) filled with instinct, a scrappy musical savant-ism has always been at the core of the band’s identity, owed to over eight years of trading off instruments, vocal lines, and musical styles. It’s no doubt that this same chemistry is what informs the tight choreography of harmonies on the new record. The dance of their voices intertwining, hovering above, striding around and even stepping over each other communicates so much of Palberta’s progression towards more conventional pop craftsmanship.
The “pop” nomer here represents emotional resonance. Of course, there’s more of a traditional song structure followed, big catchy choruses in tow. More than anything though, these songs are human. They make us feel. Some tunes are capricious, subject to vacillate between different modes, or wear themselves out. On “Fragile Place,” punching, barbed guitar lines and a meek, whisper chorus trade off until the sound peaks out and turns down tempo til its end. The acapella break in “Corner Store” emphasizes the sheer romance of the track, building up those warm feelings as each instrument is reintroduced one by one. “Hey!” is an adrenaline run, propped up by a bass melody gone full throttle, almost cartoonishly so.
On previous works, the trio's narrative construction came from little, vivid, detailed, even disparate vignettes that formed a sort of pasted up populist pointillism, a portrait that finally comes into picture from a few steps back. Their eighth studio recording takes a much more direct path to storytelling track by track in building out an intimate world that only exists between the “you” and “I”s in a song. In turn, their idiosyncratic writing style takes on universality in repetitive, singable lyrics. Hyperspecific musings on self, on friendship, on breakfast foods, even moments that are less musings and more jolts of energy or unrefined feeling all become melody, become shared experiences.
“Before I Got Here” comes in at a breakneck pace that maintains for just a minute before dissolving into something else entirely: a snare march saturated with triumphant horns and gleaming, metallic picking that closes out the album with a tone celebratory of their accomplished new direction. What certifies Palberta as all-timers goes far beyond their ability to make great music. It’s that almost a decade into the band’s existence, after repurposing their style and approach into something else entirely on Palberta5000, no one can claim with any certainty where they’ll be heading next.