Burnt Palms has been played on NTS in shows including A Colourful Storm, featured first on 15 July 2024. Songs played include Numb One.

Monterey County, Southern California, USA http://burntpalms.tumblr.com/ https://www.facebook.com/burntpalms http://burntpalms.bandcamp.com/

Burnt Palms are a fuzz-pop trio from the idyllic sounding town of Seaside in Monterey County, Northern California. This might lead you to expect a repertoire full of sunny surf anthems about the joys of life at the beach. Well, their records are certainly a lot of fun for those of us who dig buzzing guitars, tub thumping drums and great melodies, but there’s also an undercurrent of minor chord melancholy, especially evident on their new, second LP, The Girl You Knew.

Singer, guitarist and principal lyricist Christina Riley lists albums by Hole and Built to Spill among her formative favourites, so perhaps it’s not surprising that a slight sense of unease has made it through into much of her own material. Don’t let me give you the wrong impression, though. The new LP is full of all the big tunes and punk rock exhilaration you could want. The introspective and ambiguous nature of the lyrics simply adds a welcome note of realism into the mix. Like the name Burnt Palms, the songs hint that all might not be well in paradise.

Christina is backed up by the superb, gutsy playing of Brian Dela Cruz on bass and drummer Clara Nieto. It’s a great blend. All three are coming at Burnt Palms from slightly different directions and it’s particularly clear from The Girl You Knew that this is a band beginning to really open up in terms of scope. By turns they can sound playful, angry, sweet and despairing, while never deviating too far from the grimy, grungy punk-pop sound that’s likely to have grabbed your ears in the first place.