EP Review – Post Fear by Green Palm Radiation (Self Released)
It has been well over four years since Jay Newberry’s Green Palm Radiation caressed our aural senses with his mix of post-punk, noise pop, and the very earliest traces of jangle-gaze with Fear album.
This follow-up EP, as its name suggests, grabs onto the remnants of that quite superb album and builds upon the foundations it laid. As such, Blind For A Reason and the simply perfect Silent Subversion juxtapose the swirling jangly dream-pop of Bobsled Team with a C86 incessance that is so reminiscent of The Photocopies recent sound, whilst sifting everything through the more subtle end of The BVs/The Luxembourg Signal style of jangle-gaze. It sounds busy, and it genuinely is, but it never threatens to move towards cluttered, such is Newberry’s omnipresent skill in ensuring every musical nuance completely owns its place in the whole.
Carousel and Celebrate This sees the sound become increasingly dank and indeed raucous as the post-punk jangled riffs of acts such as The Bush Tetras or, more recently, The Pink Frosts crash against the typical mid-80s post-punk sound that was so dominant until it was engulfed by jangle-pop and it’s all-consuming vibrancy.
However, the very best of the release is the complete outlier. Here Revelstoke ignores all that surrounds it and offers the perfect jangly guitar-pop sound. Think Haircut 100 post-floppy haircuts and screaming girls, or indeed Nick Heyward’s mid to late 90’s solo output add swathes of Iron and Wine electric Americana, and you are just about in the right gloriously melodic musical ballpark.
This act comes and goes, tending to disappear for long hiatuses. This is perhaps the only reason why they are not as ‘Bandcamp massive’ (the absolute best kind of massive!) as they should be!
janglepophub.home.blog 