Palaces - Flume: Review
Flume
is an Australian electronic music producer who has spent the last decade fusing mainstream EDM with various subgenres of electronic music. This has given him a wide-ranging fanbase of electronic music fans following his career. Palaces is Flume's first full-length release since 2018's Hi: This Is Flume mixtape and his first album since 2016's Skin.
Review By Lav:
This was one of my most anticipated albums of the year. Not only did I just call Flume's self-titled debut one of the best albums of 2012 a few months ago, but I also loved his previous project in 2019 and still feel like I underrated it in both my initial review and on my year-end list. Since then he's released a number of singles that I really enjoyed punctuated by the excellent Toro Y Moi collaboration The Difference in 2020 and numerous singles from this record which I've dished out praise to this year. While the singles still worked for me and there are some very satisfying deep cuts in the mix I do have to say that I'm not as enamored with this record as I sort of hoped to be, even though it's still quite good.
The record had five singles and the first four were all hits with me. Say Nothing is a great kind of lead single as a straightforward EDM song with a pop hook that just burrows its way into your brain. Thankfully it also has quite a bit of instrumental diversity to flex with an array of sharp drums that grabs me right away and it has the poise to dial it back at the right moments when there doesn't need to be constantly dominating walls of sound. The second single Sirens was a massive change of pace that I wasn't crazy about at first but WOW has it grown on me. I've never been the biggest fan in the world of Caroline Polachek's vocals but her falsetto absolutely owns this song. Not only does it punctuate the distant quiet of the verses but it also manages to soar over the snappy drums and wailing keys on the hook. On top of all that the refrains have started to stick in my head more and more to the point that this is one of my favorite tracks on the album.
Escape came next and it's a banger staring frequent Flume collaborator Kucka with co-production from Quiet Bison. And what can I say the song absolutely rules Kucka's refrains are simple but they stick and her voice has so much shimmer to it that it just bursts out of the dense mix. The song also does a great job of setting up for its drop not just making impactful moments out of each climax but building on each one so the track hits harder and harder as it goes along. The finale single was the title track and closing song Palaces which is an absolutely excellent way to end the record. It starts off setting up this distant icy and very eerie sonic palette across the first two minutes but the landscape totally shifts with the emergence of Damon Albarn's vocals, which are absolutely perfect for the song. It morphs into this gentle ballad that he's just built for and he comes together with Flume to make something so serene and graceful to serve as an excellent finale to the record.
The first half of the record is where it houses most of its pop bangers and there are highlights to be found. Highest Building is an icy opener that's more uncompromising than it lets on at first. It's so bright that it has the initial makings of a classic Flume pop/EDM crossover but the more you listen to it the more you realize how thick the frying distortion is over everything. The song also foregoes a chorus in favor of a pretty exciting drop that cements its job well done as an opener. I Can't Tell follows the Never Be Like You formula closer than just about any song here. While the reflective and spacey verses aren't quite as interesting as that song, they work a GREAT setup for the absolute eruption of sound on the chorus. Once again there's a drop instead of a hook and once again Flume absolutely nails it. I don't think this song will be a big hit or anything, but it certainly worked on me.
There's a point in the middle of the record where it just starts to fixate on some weird ideas and then expand them to a full-length track and it's here where we find some of my favorite deep cuts. Get Uis pure electronica with some stuttering drums kicking it off that eventually transition into a much more abstract soundscape populated by pitched-up vocal samples floating around in the mix. It's a wandering journey but one that I really enjoy taking every time. The next track Jasper's Song is a piano number that feels like it would be some kind of interlude except it's actually fleshed out into a full song and I really like it. It starts off as one of the sweetest things I've ever heard on a Flume record but as the song goes on the keys run into thicker walls of distant noise that start to abstract and eventually overtake it like some kind of Caretaker song. It's a diversion that I really enjoy right at the record's midpoint.
Hollow was the finale single and it's also the only pure pop song that makes it into the second half of the record. It has a fine hook and an instrumental that is always present but never overtakes the core refrains. It isn't one of my favorite Flume pop tracks ever but I think it's decent enough. Only Fans is probably my favorite deep cut in the second half, though it's an inconsistent bunch. It works in some of hyperpop's blatantly sexual themes but does it with all the appropriate confidence and swagger. The only real complaint I have is that Virgen Maria's confident refrains aren't met with as hard-hitting as instrumental as I would have hoped.
Love Light and Go are two forgettable tracks bookended by the singles in the record's final run. The former has some nice vocal samples and sunny walls of synths but never really feels like it actually comes together into much of a song. Go on the other hand has some raw percussion that I enjoy but its trick of brash synth hits does get a tad old as it goes on.
The only song on the record I really don't like is DHLC, which might be my least favorite Flume song to date. The really shrill synths bouncing back and forth between channels sound awful and the awful blown-out farty drums do nothing to help it. It's clearly intended to be a sonically harsh listen and actually deploys some well times quieter moments to set up the bombast. But when all is said and done I just find the sound of the instrumentation extremely taxing and not in a compelling way.
All in all, Palaces is a pretty good album. I won't let my anticipation of the record from the singles, Flume's back catalog, and his incredible live performances blind me from that fact. Honestly, it will probably end up among the better electronic albums of 2022 when the dust settles but it doesn't quite have the same infectious flare as his debut or the same exciting experimentation of Hi: This Is Flume. Regardless his sound continues to be an endlessly exciting and unique blend of styles that I can't see myself getting bored of any time soon and this record added numerous excellent highlights to an already very strong discography. 7.5/10
This is a cool image but it's a little bit overprocessed. When you saw past Flume covers they never felt fake or edited. I think the problem lies in the saturation and if it was lessened just a bit it could have helped a lot. It's all really in your face which is fie for a cover and will likely cause people to gravitate to it since it stands out from the crowd. I just wish it was slightly more realistic in the composite to make it more successful. 5/10
For more electronica check out my review of Macross' Sailorwave III here
