The sound of loss: Ultrasound brings a certain grit to the understanding of love and loss.

Palace are a British band formed and based in London, recognised for their distinct rock with a bluesy flair and soulful sound. They have now released their highly anticipated 4th studio album, Ultrasound. It retains integrity to the development of the band’s unique sound found throughout their discography. This album feels darker though, the colourful atmosphere of previous albums is lost, as they attempt to explore harder-hitting topics through a mix of musical genres. The prominent soulful nature of the band’s style undergoes a slow death in Ultrasound as stylistically soul does not naturally pair with the album’s themes of loss and sorrow. Songs are instead far more rigid in structure and not so loose in playing style, as with albums like 2016’s So Long Forever. Palace steps away from their experimental sound and has now struck a formula. Ultrasound sheds that chaotic attachment to a diverse soundscape provided in previous projects. This makes for an extremely interesting development in the style of this band. While they retain much of their previous sound, it is completely reworked to suit new, more fleshed-out themes. Themes developed from simple loss and the downtrodden in their former albums to a new extremity, pointing to an entirely new exploration of complete loss of hope, which matures through the course of the album.

The opening track, ‘Son,’ is framed in an incredibly unique, eclectic, but almost familiar opening. It’s quietly upbeat and a fairly mellow track. Palace utilises the upbeat tone for a much darker effect when paired with the downtrodden lyrics where vocalist, Leo Wyndham, utilises a constantly shifting vocal range. Wyndham’s vocals illustrate different stages of pain, shifting intensely from the high “you must be hurting,” to a much lower register, where he laments how the ‘silence grows.’ Musically the track remains upbeat, despite its lyrics, this contorts the song and speaks to a sense of idealism that is slowly sapped out of the album. The scathing sense of reality that grounds Ultrasound can be heard in the lyricism, Wyndham sings about a “never-ending darkness.” The track confronts the inescapable conditions and provides no obvious alternative as they conclude “It’s all gone, you must be certain.” As an opening track, it embodies the album’s message yet remains mysterious, feeding into the album’s narrative as it becomes progressively immersed in the darker aspects of love and loss.

Moments of positivity and love are undercut with comparisons between love and a “sting.”

The next song, ‘Say the Words,’ hits us with some mighty guitar licks from lead guitarist, Rupert Turner, that ring out and wrap around Matt Hodges’ snappy drumbeat. This pairing creates a great build-up and a final cascading drop that feels as though you’re falling, further and further down. This culminates in the repressive vocals that sound out feelings that can never be blurted but must be held and mulled over, creating cause for anguish, and self-reflection. The singularity of Wyndham’s voice makes for more personable listening, where we lay witness to a direct relaying of this very personal trauma.

‘Love Is a Precious Thing’ is where the recognition of love and its beauty is explored, and a new outlook on love is provided. Almost as if with time and healing, love, upon reflection, still has much to give, and this provides some semblance of hope. The lyricism suggests that love requires care and the regret that ensures when care is not taken in a relationship. This is seen in the lyrics “we had it all,” and their contrast with the coarseness love took in its development with it becoming a “viscous” object and a “sting.” Meanwhile, the electronic sound of the track is monotonous, only broken up at the midpoint of the track by an uplifting airy twinkling, developing into a wavering electronic effect, and finally, an isolated bassy synth beat. The bass emerges and asserts itself into the former electronic pulsating beat that pulls us back into the noise, a staple of this song. Alongside this Wyndham’s vocals send you spinning with the repetition of “love is a precious thing” which overwhelms and instils a chaotic mindset. Though the contextual setting of a relationship that never worked out makes for a more sly and sinister usage of terms like “love” and “precious”. Moments of positivity and love are undercut with comparisons between love and a “sting.” It’s sinister in the way that if isolated this song can appear to be an ode to love but is ultimately an abstraction for what love could but can never be.

Flurries of screeching on Ultrasound represent the motif of locked-up emotions escaping.

Some beautiful plucking on the opening of ‘All We’ve Ever Wanted’ and a rollicking vibrato of strings make for an opening you can just sink into, and with the high tempo drumming accompanying it, makes for a great orchestra of sound. This composition of sound continues throughout the album. With Harry Deacon’s throaty bass and eerie electronic sounds furnishing the album and causing the music to fracture into tiny strands and move in different directions in a very serene manner. It’s a scene of tranquillity that has undertones of a potential diversion from this state as electronic sound obscures the beauty the instruments carry. This musical conflict represents the album’s tackling of the duality between the idealised and reality.

Flurries of screeching on Ultrasound represent the motif of locked-up emotions escaping, many of the songs attempt to portray this emotional release but this is best shown in ‘Rabid Dog’. The song’s slow build-up from bluesy playing to the scream urging another to “put me down” serves as a moment of catharsis.  The delivery of this line seems as though all energy and power have been sapped out. The album also repeats these phrases to ensure their impact is felt through reappearances in song, signifying their chief importance.

All in all, Ultrasound is a very insightful listen, characterised by the highly emotive theme of the loss of love and attachment, which borders on infatuation and obsession. It creates an outlet to feel or express emotions that mirror the pain of love lost. The strength of emotion brings people together and creates the sense that love itself must be perfect and makes the strength to pull one another apart even greater from anyone involved. It’s the uncontrivable emotion that hardly finds enough words to order it and make sense of the complexity, that is love, but Palace does one better and does enough to articulate why it ends.

★★★★

Recommended Listening: ‘Say The Words.’