ROCK ISLAND

Listening to this record, I'm reminded of a rhetorical question: "When is a rock record not a rock record?" This question was originally posited by the good folks at FACT Magazine as an introduction to Glenn Branca's "The Ascension", no wave making orchestral rock in the sense that it transmuted the likes of Steve Reich to post/transcended-beyond-punk. But here, in what's probably pound for pound the best rock record of the year, it's not a matter of structure and influence but of timbre and follow-up questions such as "Where the hell did this come from?"

To explain, we start by identifying Palm as a math rock band majorly in the contemporary vein of bright, generally accessible technicality you also see with the likes of Caddywhompus. Immediately, however, Palm sounds radically different from all other math-pop-rock since oftentimes the guitars sound demented, or nothing like guitars, or both. The secret sauce is MIDI pickups on the guitars, sending the otherwise standard guitar geometry through digital blenders of newfound sounds that you might've heard from Animal Collective or Superorganism, just strummed. This is both tasty and a revolution in playing guitars, or any other instrument for that matter. With the excellent songwriting and feel good performances, that alone sets this album apart and above. But it gets even better, since on top of that comes such treats as This Heat style angularity meeting what's otherwise a Beach Boys style cut with "Composite", and points of comparison such as Battles and The Unicorns.

At once a commercial breakthrough, guitar fanatic's new locus of reverence, and sure to be influential masterpiece, "Rock Island" is the guitar record not to sleep on this year. An enjoyable romp, a forward thinking rock record, and not a rock record.