Palm Ghost's dreamy "Wide Awake and Waiting" is bathed in a blue light

AP Track Review

Wide Awake and Waiting by Nashville's Palm Ghosts can't help but feel nostalgic as it is bathed in a kind of 80's post rock meets new wave-esque blue light maybe even bounced off a glitter ball and onto a young doe eyed Molly Ringwald at a high school dance in a never made John Hughes movie. It is a sound of torn youth from a time of Evil Empires and Reaganomics and while we thought a former shoe polished black haired actor was a weird choice for President who would of thought that, by today's standard, he was so middle of the road. Politics aside, Palm Ghost does mine that wonderful 80's sound that was, for the most part, really romantic and not overtly sexual and I like that. On top of a driving beat like running to someone you want there are multiple layers of sounds, sparkly guitars, keys and lush harmonies as  well as lovely longing and hope beneath it all. 

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Robb Donker 




THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:

Palm Ghosts is a dream pop  / post punk band based in Nashville TN led by songwriter and producer Joseph Lekkas.

Taking cues from such bands as Cocteau Twins, Peter Gabriel, Echo and The Bunnymen, New Order, early U2 and The Cure, Palm Ghosts takes the sounds of early 80s alternative music and brings it into the new millennium.

Their self-titled debut is a tapestry of lo-fi folk and indie pop 88.5 WXPN in Philadelphia called “Elegant and Sweeping Pop”.

Greenland, Palm Ghosts’ second record, consists of songs that walk the line of electronic, indie and Americana music Atwood magazine called “A stirring mix of folk writing with electronica-tinged production…Electronically magnetic and emotionally heartfelt.”

In May of 2017 Palm Ghosts found their sound with the release of Architecture, a critically lauded collection of cinematic dream pop songs.

Music News UK put it best when they wrote “The commodified and codified 80’s are here to stay, from the fake consciousness pop culture nostalgia that dominates the virtual shopping aisles to recreated and reimagined movie memories that manipulate and skew the present. Saddled with the past, culture’s inertia offers up facsimile pap and xerox rock. However, hope exists, listen as true light continues to glisten, appearing through the cracks and haunting the NOW are Nashville’s Palm Ghosts.”

Palm Ghosts is Joseph Lekkas, Ben Douglas, Jason Springman and Rene Lambert.