album "Shore To Shore" disponible le 28 Février 2011
In the midst of the music industry crisis art student Norman Palm had an idea: Why not visualize the rough recordings he had made between Paris and Berlin, produce a 200-page artbook with a cd and throw it on the collapsing market via his own DIY-record label? Sometimes it seems one has to ignore all golden rules to make something work: Norman Palm's book did not only sell pretty well, soon he was also invited to play live shows all over Europe such as the renowned Austrian art festival Steirischer Herbst and Haldern festival where he played along with bands such as Fleet Foxes and Yeasayer. He played at countless art events, sang next to Jane Birkin in a Parisian radio studio, was hyped by music magazines such as Stereogum, got filmed by french Blogotheque and eventually even found himself featured on the world's most visited blog run by Hollywood gossip boy Perez Hilton. Norman Palm got around.
Norman Palm also gets around because he decided not to live his life at one place only. Taking the adventures of a long-distance relationship to a not always easy level he practically commutes between Berlin and Mexico City. Enough exercise for body and soul to make contacts, get inspired and write new songs. While Norman Palm's DIY-debut was a loose collection of songs, «Shore to Shore» is a homogenic piece and a musical quantum leap! Palm gets rid of his singer-songwriter image, irony and shyness of his debut have vanished. «Shore to Shore» is pop and love-long-distance set to music. Start/Stop, the album's overture brings together what is later split up into its parts: Ukulele, electronic beats, crazy choirs, African vs. technoid vibes, warm vs. synthetic. Above all floats Palm's distinctive voice. In Smile Palm sets foot into the american indie-terrain normally conquered by the likes of Wilco, he designs a 2.0 version of Paul Simon's Graceland with Images, flirts with Beck and the Beta Band in Landslide and spins out of $20 with an extensive Krautrock steelpan synth loop. Easy, virtually the title track of the album and a lyrical centrepiece ("Let's all be friends with the telephone calls / Let's all be friends with the departure halls") layers voices, basslines and synthesizers thus providing a perfect soundtrack for an early morning after clubbing. It's almost like listening to the radio, only that radio stations of such quality are hard to find! Norman sings about love and how it interferes with life.
About distance and closeness, about intimacy and strangeness, about missing and losing, love in a digitalized and globalized design of life. Doing that he avoids kitsch and cliché, writes poetry without being corny, makes himself clear, honestly and humble, never awkward, never bigger-than-life. Palm throws his very personal and his musical influences into a pot, cooks his own soup and puts it right on the table of international contemporary pop culture. Palm produced the album together with Janne Lounatvuori, a Finn in Berlin.
Their motto: Nothing may stay as it was. Also this time Palm pre-recorded sketches of his songs with a laptop, but soon acoustic guitars became a mere supporting actor. Palm and Lounatvouri played all the instruments, took much time for the production in a small Berlin studio run by three ex-pat Finns. For
Start/Stop they won Daniel Nentwig over to play the Rhodes which he normally does full-time for Erlend Øye's band The Whitest Boy Alive. On background vocals the album features Emma and Mia Kemppainen from the blog-hype-girl-band Le Corps Mince de Françoise.
Palms sudden devotion to pure pop only surprises at first glance: Palm graduated from art school in Visual Communication. His work in between sound and image, between music, art and design has ever since reflected on the stereotypes of pop. With his very first single and Malte Rettberg's complementary videos he paid tribute to the 80s classics Boys Don't Cry and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. The videos worked as a gender discourse, on the one hand contrasting masculinity in contemporary advertisement and historical propaganda, and on the other mashing up youTube teenagers performing Cindy Lauper in their parents' suburban bedrooms. With such a striking love for pop it only made sense for Norman to try it out himself. And we are astounded that he is that convincing! Only the artwork was not done by Palm himself this time. After his giant book project he handed it over to the Parisian graphic design studio Ahonen Lamberg who designed the cover using a photograph by New York artist Hisham Bharoocha.
In an article in German Spex Magazine entitled "Between big cities" Palm is described as a German pop export who is in fact not perceived as German at all. He is in a way City Slang's Lady Gaga: an international pop artist between art, music and design. A Lily Allen with more feeling and intimacy, an urban and cosmopolitan idea of a indie pop. «Bon goût pop» – «Pop of good taste» titled the Parisian Liberation about him and we could not put it any better!
By the way, rumors say that a mid-nineties poster of Robbie Williams can be found in Palm's living room…
Tracklist:
01. Start/Stop
02. Smile
03. Images
04. Landslide
05. $ 20
06. WDYD?
07. Easy
08. Sleeper
09. Phantom Lover
10. Go To Sleep