CENTURY PALM "White Light" and "Valley Cyan" 7inch

photo by Rico Moran

     With members of bands such as Dirty Beaches, the Ketamines and Tough Age among the ranks it is safe to assume that Toronto's Century Palm take on, for the sake of using an all-encompassing word, pop music is going to be a bit skewered.
     Taking two songs that first appeared on a cassette EP last year, "White Light" and "New Creation", as their first sounds to commit to having etched in polyvinyl chloride, serves well as the bands calling card.  The former, rooted by a rhythmic charge of guitar chords and layered vocals that give it a bit on anthemic qualities to it, is a zippy bit of post new wave. "Post" in a way where some, say CMJ chart darlings for instance, decide that emulating the Heaven 17 and A Flock Of Seagulls or whatever record they found at some ridiculous mark up (y'know be cause vinyl is back so those 3 dollar standards are now 10 dollar "scores") is actually a good idea to permanently erase rock and roll from pop music all together once and for all, Century Palm do their best to be faithful to the future of the past while separating the wheat from the chaff. That isn't to say that they band is doing some "rock the fuck out thing" as there is quite a bit of an art tempered happening going on here but even in that aspect there is a sway and vibe here that is missing from a large chunk of the things that are trying to mine the same territory that being pushed in the going for adds hype sheets that flood college radio programmers mail box each week.
     The latter delves a little deeper into the atmosphere with spacey and gurgling synth notes and treated guitars hooks that touch on early era Ultravox and mid period Wire but in more of inspirational way that a direct copy.
     "Valley Cyan" gels the elements of above together and, along guitars that relay between Spaghetti western meets Joe Meek heavily reverb and electrified stabs and swirly, cosmic keyboard lines, finds the band locating a dreamscape to call their own. This also makes the the b-side, "Accept", sound like it could be from a different band all together with a gothic fog rolling in after dark sound and sax honks that sound like they were needed after a long weird night of talking about free jazz and Roxy Music albums.
www.centurypalm.com