ALBUM REVIEW: Boom Boom Room (Side B) – Palaye Royale

Every now and again, a band will emerge seemingly from nowhere and explode into mainstream consciousness with a sudden jolt. It happened back in the day with MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE becoming all-conquering gods of emo for a while, and recently the likes of CREEPER and even acts such as TWENTY ONE PILOTS have experienced massive breakthroughs thanks to legions of almost cult-like fans. The latest of such acts to experience a massive breakthrough via the underground are Las Vegas-based rockers PALAYE ROYALE, a band of brothers trading in a brand of rock cut together with heavily glam-rock inspired aesthetics. Signing with Sumerian Records at the tail end of 2015 and releasing their debut album Boom Boom Room (Side A), the group are now set to release what’s effectively the second part of that record, the appropriately-titled Boom Boom Room (Side B).

First impressions are key when it comes to music, and the fact that opener Death Dance kicks in with something that effectively sounds like a low-key pastiche of THE LIBERTINES feels instantly jarring when you consider the types of outlets that have been hyping the band thus far. Rumbling along, with only meandering instrumentation and vocalist Remington Leith’s monotonous croon for a good half of its runtime, the track only attempts to do anything interesting by the time it hits a second half tempo-change – though this doesn’t really go far enough for it to become necessarily interesting.

Teenage Heartbreak Queen is, for lack of better phrasing, essentially more of the same too. Jangly guitars set the stage for another round of Remington’s overly-exaggerated vocal stylings, as his bandmates create a backdrop of fairly standard up-tempo rock so plain that it probably wouldn’t sound amiss on a KINGS OF LEON record. Perhaps the best of the bunch comes with You’ll Be Fine – a track which, again, doesn’t exactly do anything new or original in terms of its glorified up-tempo indie sound, but manages to slightly top its brethren by virtue of at least having a rather decent chorus tacked on.

In fact, the only real diversion from PALAYE ROYALE‘s usual musical stylings come when they decide to go for something slightly more ballad-like. Dying In A Hot Tub is the first of these, and takes the acoustic-start-into-eventual-noisy-climax approach, beginning with a simple arrangement of acoustic guitar and Leith’s vocal, before gradually bringing in their usual tone and returning to a slightly differently-paced version of what we’ve already sat through three full songs of.

And therein lies the problem with Boom Boom Room (Side B), and arguably PALAYE ROYALE in general – there’s simply next to no variance in what they do. Crawling into the second half of the record we’re met with yet more carbon copies of what came before, be it more attempts to tap into the Pete Doherty-meets-ARCTIC MONKEYS school of indie toe-tappers on Mrs. Infamous (My Sweetness) and Love The Void, or when they try what feels like attempting to channel something more glam-oriented like T-REX at times on Hospital Beds. Nothing really hits with any kind of impact, as the band move between attempts at various indie impersonations with little success, and the result quickly becomes an absolute slog to sit through.

As if things weren’t muddled enough already, the record then closes off with The Boom – an absolutely astonishingly pointless 2:24 track of narration and faint piano. There’s a sense that this is PALAYE ROYALE going for either one last attempt of theatrical flourish, or the kind of thing that other bands would likely use as inserts within far larger records to break up the pace a bit, but used here to close out a release, it feels completely unnecessary and something that listeners will likely never bother with more than once.

Given that it’s effectively one half of a complete album, it’s worth noting just how brief Boom Boom Room (Side B) actually feels. Despite containing seven actual tracks plus the glorified outro, the release only just crawls over the 25 minute mark; though given the relative quality, this might actually be for the best. They might be one of the most talked-about bands around at the moment, but going purely off of the material found on Boom Boom Room (Side B) and how derivative it feels of other far more enjoyable bands, it’s incredibly difficult to see precisely why.

Rating: 3/10

Boom Boom Room (Side B) is out now via Sumerian Records. 

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