Charlie Hilton is the frontwoman for Portland, Oregon indie rockers Blouse. On her first solo album, she releases a grab bag of sounds and moods that spans influences from several decades. Titled after her Sanskirt name (she’s taken on Charlie as her name since high school), Palana<\/i> may mean protection, but here it’s synonymous with spacey, dreamy, and gentle sounds. <\/p>\n
The title track \u201cPalana\u201d is placed first on the album and introduces us to a lullaby-esque opening with minimal music and soft vocals. \u201cSomething For Us All\u201d follows and is fuller, louder, full of synths, and wanders from beat driven to airy, almost spacey melodies. \u201cPony\u201d then moves into more familiar indie rock waters with a dreamy, syrupy-sweetness; similarly, the more subdued, harmony of \u201cLong Goodbye\u201d is well within today’s version of indie sounds.<\/p>\n
The middle of the album brings us the orchestral melancholy of \u201cFunny Away,\u201d the laidback and breezy 80’s feelings of \u201cWHY,\u201d and possibly one of the darkest tunes here, the solemn \u201cLet’s Go To A Party.\u201d Though the song is rooted in ’80s New Wave and is highly danceable, it has the underlying starkness of a Joy Division anthem. \u201cSnow\u201d follows and seems like an extension of the previous song, only with soft, disjointed horns in the background. <\/p>\n
The back end of the album is equally as strong with the horns and lazy atmosphere of \u201cThe Young\u201d and the throwback folk sounds of \u201cNo One Will,\u201d which gives nod to the ’60s. This debut exits with the lovely, acoustic \u201c100 Million,\u201d where Hilton’s gorgeous vocals are allowed to shine \u2013 which only seems fitting as her pipes are the star of the show here.<\/p>\n
Palana <\/i>is definitely less dream-pop than Hilton\u2019s work in Blouse. Her touch of experimentalism here, especially with the subtle jazz and psych-rock, makes this a solo album most of us will like, though I suspect we’ll love the next album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":33327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10091],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-45139","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-charlie-hilton","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45139"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}