A certain duality exists in post-punk, in which splendid clarity changes hands with anxious ramblings, and back again. And then there’s Atlanta’s Pallas, who seems to combine the two into a seamless mix that disrupts your tranquility, and subsequently smooths it over. Their single, “Cast A Lion, Cured A Crow,” off their forthcoming debut S/T album (out May 26 on Drop Medium Records), is a bone-rattling dance of jittery rhythms, balanced out by thickly reverberating arpeggios whose thick-laden reverb breathe soothing life into an otherwise cold medium.
It’s tweaky and unsettling, and then it’s not, the sense of calm all the more noticeable in the immediate absence of chaos, like the most graceful recovery after having fallen down the stairs. You’re relieved still to be walking, yet perhaps later discovering a limp in your gait. Singer Danielle Brutto’s eerily distant vocals instill a sense of unanimity in the agitation created in the instruments. It’s extraordinarily relatable, in both hearing it, and fleshed out on paper, as she notes, “There’s something relentless and impatient about the instrumentals of the song and for me it became about love hesitation, playing waiting games, and the feeling you get when you’re trying to love someone who holds all their cards to their chest while you’ve been showing off all of yours, but still getting no response to either continue or conclude.”
