Chapel Club

Love, lust, death, dreams, theological reference, poetic imagery – just part of what Chapel Club have turned out on this much anticipated debut album, ‘Palace’. Having been heralded as a band set to break for the last three years, it is only now that they have they finally unleashed the long-awaited big one. The question is whether it has been worth the wait. Have this five-piece London-based group pulled it together here to stake their place for major acclaim?

Whatever ‘Palace’ offers, however, it must be noted that the band themselves have already declared they have ‘moved on’ from the record’s material. And indeed, the release late last year of the ‘Wintering’ EP gave indication of that direction.

With influences cited such as My Bloody Valentine, New Order and Deerhunter, and comparisons made to White Lies and Editors, one has a feel of what might be on offer, even if you had somehow managed to bypass the last year’s single releases: low fi indie, lush textured melodies, abundant layered sounds that peak and swell, yet without never losing their immediacy and intimacy, and overlaid with a quality of the night. But fundamentally, Chapel Club are defined primarily by two main aspects. The rich depth of Lewis Bowman’s vocals, at times vocally caressing, at others lower pitched and brooding, are at once both compelling and inviting; winding their way over each song with hypnotic intensity.

Lyrically, they are literal and scholarly, creating word pattern themes high in existential subtext. ‘Night falls in and the skyline hardens/Colours dissolving until faces are lost among the stars,’ is the poetic cadence of ‘All The Eastern Girls’, working gentle guitar strokes along a steady line, before powering the song into life. ‘Is it strange I sound bitter when I can feel my heart is falling apart?’ he questions rhetorically on ‘O Maybe I’, before switching to talk of ‘bodies swinging in the sycamore tree’ on the synth loaded, bittersweet ‘Surfacing’ (lest the listener had been hitherto lulled into a false sense of romanticism), whilst closing number ‘Paper Thin’ opens out with ‘The archangel’s wings are still bleeding’.

Second single release ‘Five Trees pits the ebb and flow of white noise waves against Liam Arklie’s thumping bass, ably complementing Bowman’s terseness of delivery, while ‘The Shore’, with its opening wave breaks and seabird sounds, leads into a beautiful shoegaze of swirls and dreaming guitars. Both stand head and shoulders over ‘After The Flood’, perhaps one of the weakest points on the album, that promises much with its pounding guitar riffs, but loses way and lacks the cohesion shown elsewhere.

The pièce de résistance, however, comes on the eighth track, ‘Fine Light’. Opening to a drifting harmony and Rich Mitchell’s pulsing drum beat, you are carried along to a midway point on a seeming ballad when the pace changes, moves to a dramatic up tempo with the sirenesque guitar work of Messrs. (Michael) Hibbert & (Alex) Parry and powers along at the speed of light to a white noise conclusion. Reputedly one of Bowman’s own personal album favourites, it may still only be January but this is quite possibly one of the finest tracks that will be heard all year. A close runner-up is ‘Blind’, depicting a failing relationship lyrically (‘we fell together like an accident/two lives colliding like continents’) with a Ride familiar backdrop musically.

Produced by Brit Award-winner Paul Epworth (Florence and the Machine, Adele, Friendly Fires), Palace is, in essence, a class debut from a band set to become major players. Dark, yes. Intriguing, yes. Archly ironic, yes. Worth hearing? Most certainly.

Whilst the 11 track 'Palace' proper justly warrants a 4* rating, the inclusion on the Deluxe Edition of the original four tracks from the limited availability 'Wintering', rates it above that. Material written post the album, this shows a lighter, more intricate sound to Chapel Club, and allows for a greater range of emotional intensity from Bowman, and just what promise they hold for the future. 'Widows, by far the stand out piece, is an eight-minute affair that shimmers like sunlight on water, striking out with dramatic lifts of guitar that melt soulfully into the vocals that never once lose their hold on the attention. With 'Telluride' (the inclusion of airy female vocals here add both grace and dimension to a mood-spun canvas), 'Roads' and 'Bodies' completing the package, what you have is one hell of an awe-inspiring album.