The Essex-based rock four-piece Palps are due to release their debut album ‘Black Heart’ on October 7th, 2022.
Since its formation in 2018, this is the group’s most ambitious work to date. The follow-up to the band’s 2020 debut EP ‘Letters To You (That I’ll Never Send)’, Black Heart sees Palps turn their eight-track album into a harrowing eight-chapter short story that highlights the daily struggles of someone navigating their poor mental health and how it affects not only them but those around them.
Across each of the tracks’ music videos, we are introduced to four characters, the story’s protagonist Matt, plus Rose, Charlotte, and the Plague Doctor. The story deepens and grows with each single release, with the room, at times tidy and decorated and at others cluttered or destroyed representing Matt’s mental state, whilst the plague doctor character represents his suicidal thoughts.
Produced, mixed, and mastered with Jack Twiner at Pyramid Studios in Reading, every track on the album unravels and pieces itself back together song by song, yet somehow manages to end up someplace uglier and more uncertain than the track before.
Speaking about the album, vocalist and lyricist Alex Gray states, “Black Heart at its core is about how traumatic events and mental health struggles can leave you hardened, no longer able to express love in the same way that you used to and can often lead to you hurting those closest to you, without you even realizing.“
Prior to the album’s release, the band has just dropped the single ‘Imprint’. The song explores the idea of being someone’s soulmate when they in turn aren’t yours, and how difficult it can be when someone seems so perfect for you in every way possible yet isn’t what your heart wants. This is the sixth of eight chapters in the album’s short film. Mirroring the song’s lyrical themes, we see Charlotte excitedly propose to Matt, while he hesitates, taken aback.
Explaining his ideas for the concept, Alex says, “Matt hesitates and Charlotte realizes that he still has feelings for Rose, despite her being the perfect girlfriend, helping him improve his life drastically and getting him back into work. This is slightly more complicated as when I was writing the script, I wanted it to come across that Matt really does love Charlotte, but his previous trauma of hurting Rose so badly has made him unable to fully throw himself into the new relationship.”
Imprint is e available on all major digital platforms.
Black Heart is due for release October 7th 2022 and will be available on all major digital platforms.
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