The Palace Flophouse appeared from seemingly out of nowhere roughly a year ago. My first exposure was in a random Champaign basement on Record Store Day last year, when they supported Elsinore and Mazes. I missed most of Mazes and something seemed off during the Elsinore set (indeed, they would shed a member in the weeks following the show), but I was wowed by how simple, direct and seemingly at home the Palace Flophouse were in a live setting. In the end, it turns out it was actually their basement. While their live performances alternate between founding members Bradley Bergstrand and Gretchen Shaw as an acoustic duo and a full band configuration, it’s obvious from seeing them several more times in the past year that they’ve been working on some of the tunes on Bad Friends Forever for quite some time, and the dedication shows in the excellent album they’ve come up with.
Looking back at the band’s previous albums, Try Not to Get Worried and the earlier Yesterday Was FUN!!!, their growth is evident. While the first album is mostly a solo and acoustic affair, Try Not to Get Worried sees the band adding more instruments and members, and experimenting with pop harmonies that they’ve worked into the new release well. From the crunching opening of “Just a Bad Friend”, it’s obvious that they’ve become a full-fledged rock and roll band with Bad Friends Forever. The thirty-two minutes of music on the album sit somewhere between acoustic emo and Cheap Trick, which makes for simple and poetic lyrics that are kept from becoming too melodramatic by the band’s power and knack for earworm hooks.
Stream “Addicts Victorious”
The trifecta of “North Platte”, “Addicts Victorious” and “Missouri” is the album’s strongest sequence, and any of these three songs would be a great candidate for radio. “Addicts Victorious”, about a cult band that refuses to record or play shows (the kind you steal a tape of from your older brother who saw them once), seems destined to become an instant classic, and the slower “North Platte” recall the best of their sparser earlier work. Taken with the remainder of the album, the three songs form the centerpiece of a loose roadtrip concept, narrated by a couple who are running either to or from something. After continuing east through Chicago and Michigan, the journey ends in another standout track, the manifestoish “Crash/Burn” ( “if it sounds good, we’ll sing it / if it feels good, we’ll feel it” ). Perhaps the journey on Bad Friends Forever is meant to parallel that of the band (or perhaps not), but you can’t deny that the album is an ambitiously plotted and fabulously executed experiment. They have three (!) shows this Saturday, so for god’s sake, go to one. Pick up the album too — after all, it is Record Store Day.
The Palace Flophouse perform three times this Saturday, 11:00 a.m. at Parasol Records, 2:20 p.m. at Exile on Main Street, and 9:00 p.m. (show start time) at Mike ‘N Mollys.