Album Review: Palace - Binary Music

A couple of years ago, Palace put out their debut album. It was a decent record, and there was certainly nothing wrong with it, but there was also nothing special about it. They were another melodic rock band playing melodic rock exactly how melodic rock is played, with a few good songs, and a bunch that were just ok. What I find odd is that after one album that didn't make a huge statement about his talents, Michael Palace was put on the assembly line, cranking out songs for a host of other melodic rock projects. I don't understand how that happened, or why he would start giving away songs when his own band had yet to get off the ground.... unless he was saving his best stuff for himself.

The record starts off with the title track, an ode for the old days of rock and roll. It falls pretty flat since 1) Palace is younger than I am, and never experienced the analog days, and 2) This record is dotted with digital synths, and was almost assuredly recorded on computers. It is binary music, even as he uses that term as a pejorative. If you studied logic, that means he just argued his own record is inferior. Not a good start.

"Binary Music" is another one of those records that exists to recreate what it was like to turn on the radio in 1988. I've said before, and I'll say again here, I don't know why anyone would want to do that. I was a little too young to have been paying attention at the time, but as I recall real rock fans hated this stuff back then. '80s rock' was an insult, and the names Hall and Oates might as well be aliases of Satan himself. And yet Palace is intent on trying to be the rock soundtrack to a weak Miami Vice spin-off.

He does a good job of conjuring up the sound he's aiming for. This record absolutely sounds like 80s soft rock. There are supposed to be a couple of heavier guitars to make this stand out, but the keyboards and synths do a lot of the heavy lifting. We get that cold, reverb-y sound that I hated then, and haven't grown that much more fond of over the years. It sounds dated, and not dated in the way that makes you say you've missed it, like a certain other band does with Led Zeppelin.

Moving past that issue, the songwriting here is again a mixed bag. There are songs like the title track and "Tears Of Gaia" that are rather flat, but then we get "Love Songs", which is a real gem. As was the case last time, Palace has potential, but he doesn't have the consistency to make a great record yet. I don't know what effect it has, but I can't imagine cranking out songs for others is helping him to put together records for himself. "Binary Music" has some of the pieces to be very good, but it also sounds like it needed more time spent on the writing. Time I don't think he has.

So Palace has once again delivered a record that is decent, but not more. People who miss the 80s more than I do will like it much more than me, but the main takeaway is that being a songwriter for hire and being a band that makes great records are two different tasks. Palace might have figured out the former, but he's still working on the latter.