Palm are a Philadelphia-based art rock band formed in 2011 at college in Upstate New York, when high school friends Eve Alpert and Kasra Kurt met Gerasimos Livitsanos and Hugo Stanley. In those early days, the band was just beginning to forge its collective musical identity through experiments in recording and performing live.
Palm play rock music backwards – all four members are self-taught. Alpert and Kurt’s guitars occupy themselves most often with the pace-keeping work typical of a rhythm section. Meanwhile, Livitsanos’ bass and Stanley’s drums perform commentary and reportage from their deeply embedded positions at the front. The band is firmly attached to the physicality of rock, but not as much its tone; their instruments tend to sound like any number of things at any given time.
After two EPs and a few loose tracks, Palm issued their first full-length album, Trading Basics, in 2015, on Car Park Records. They followed it in subsequent years with another EP and 2018’s Rock Island, issuing their third LP, Nicks and Grazes, on Saddle Creek in October 2022. In June 2023 the band announced their split – although Alpert and Kurt continue to work together as Kassie Krut.
PRESS FOR PALM
” The momentum of Palm’s arrangements feels like a wonder of physics.” PITCHFORK
“Melodically complex art-rock with an abundance of digital and organic textures.” THE FADER