Chapel Club are a London based five piece, signed to Universal imprint Loog. Palace their Paul Epworth produced, debut long player is released following a string of singles that garnered major radio play.

After a minute and a half of kooky, dark noises Palace jumps straight into popular single, 'Surfacing'. It all starts promisingly enough together with a catchy chorus but, from there on it seems to plod along the same journey until that ‘indie’ trademark thing of just hitting your guitar really fast as heard to better effect on Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 'Maps'.

'After The Flood' again, resembles any textbook ‘indie’ track. It’s almost as if their creativity ran dry after writing the very few memorable tracks on Palace such as 'The Blind', 'O Maybe I' and the aforementioned 'Surfacing'. On others, you find yourself tapping your feet and predicting drumbeats before they even get going, which is in no way a good thing. 'Paper Thin' sees vocalist Bowman try to replicate Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend fame and 'The Shore' whilst being My Bloody Valentine inspired is just plain boring and defunct of atmosphere.

The majority of this album is totally uninspiring, with annoyingly plenty of others drawing similarities to Echo and The Bunnymen. This collection of songs isn’t worthy of being included in Ian McCulloch's Sunday paper.


Expect to hear this band in every indie night throughout the land but, instead of bothering with this I suggest, if you haven’t already done so going out and buying Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures and Echo's Porcupine.

Palace is yet another example of mediocrity being pushed by the usual rags.