Atlanta’s Pallas will release their self-titled debut album this Friday, May 26th via Drop Medium Records (Datenight, Pucker Up, Flower Girl), but the band are streaming the record in full with Clrvynt magazine (stream it below). The young Atlanta post-punk quartet have created a unique and challenging mini-album that shows the band’s strength in manipulated repetition, art-rock expanse, and abrasive rhythmic shifts.
Clrvynt shared:
“Post-punk doesn’t always have to be gloomy and joyless. It’s often full of life, featuring a vast array of emotions. That seems to be the M.O. for Pallas, a new four-piece art-rock band out of Atlanta … what you’ll notice immediately is how off-the-wall instrumentation results in something genuinely fresh (see the palpitating guitar in “Render (Location 13)”). Singer Danielle Brutto contorts her voice, alternating between haunting, beautiful and strange often in the same song. There’s multiple levels to what the band can do, be it odd and experimental à la “Itchy Feet (Location 12)” or music more aligned with Sonic Youth-style alt-rock on “Down.” That said, everything they attempt, they nail.”
Photo by Ashby Blackburn
“A whirlwind of noise and colour … Led by Danielle Brutto’s vociferous lead vocal, that rattles around the inside of a track that feels destined to collapse in on itself at any given the moment, “Render” offers a thrilling taste of the band’s spiky, spunky brand of post-punk” – GoldFlakePaint
“a bone-rattling dance of jittery rhythms, balanced out by thickly reverberating arpeggios whose thick-laden reverb breathe soothing life into an otherwise cold medium. It’s tweaky and unsettling, and then it’s not, the sense of calm all the more noticeable in the immediate absence of chaos, like the most graceful recovery after having fallen down the stairs.” – Impose Magazine
“the band has focused on honing their ecstatic art rock in live settings. The four-piece is an example of balance and collaboration, a sparkling mix best exemplified by Valentina Tapia’s expressive bass lines and Danielle Brutto’s powerful vocals.” – Immersive Atlanta
More about the band:
In the revival of post-punk that has swept the underground for the past few years, it often seems that many artists tend to lean towards a certain sort of style within that realm. It seems easy for musicians to lose touch with what it is they actually want to express, instead opting for the vibe that was found in some many of the acts of the 70’s and 80’s. That being said, it is very exciting when a new band emerges that doesn’t seem too concerned with these sort of aesthetics, but rather draws comparisons out of essence rather than requirement. Pallas, a new four piece group from Atlanta, GA, plays music that sprawls out of the same scene that brought us bands like Warehouse and Red Sea. Their strange arrangements are complex yet rely on repetition, touching base with each member’s own artistic understandings of rhythm, noise, atmosphere – and how all of these things correlate together to bring a concrete sound unique and not easily comparable to one genre or band.
Singer Danielle Brutto, a trained painter having studied at The New School in NYC has the fortunate ability to fashion her unique, ghostly voice into swells and swerves that serve as abstract melodies upon guitarist Zane Durfree’s noisy burts, while bassist Valetina Tapia’s no-wave grooves guide each piece through prodigious 19 year-old drummer Decker D’alesio’s percussive fits and convulsions, landing on grooves and repetitions only out of luck rather than deliberation. All together their short, two minute songs have an open, cold atmosphere so often associated with post-punk, while the music itself is lively, exciting, and interesting.
