Biography
Fake Palms are, fundamentally, a dream-pop band that plays with garage-punk aggression, subjecting pristine pop songs to bruising beatings. For them, distortion isn’t a weapon, but the inevitable consequence of a stringent, Dogme 95-worthy approach to recording that emphasizes live-off-the-floor authenticity and forbids overdubs. The in-the-red interaction of le Riche and Halley’s gleaming guitar lines, Marshall’s rhythmic rumble, and Simone’s thwack attack has produced a naturally corroding effect, as if all the sound bouncing off the studio walls formed a storm system that soaked the recordings in static. Fake Palms has evolved from Michael le Riche’s bedroom recording project to a veritable Toronto underground supergroup, with contributions from members of Hooded Fang, Burning Love, and Slim Twig.
There are no real palm trees in Toronto, but the city is seeing an uptick in tiki bars—the sort of bamboo-lined spaces with enough beach-scene murals and evergreen faux-fronds to make you think you’ve stepped into a Tahitian resort (at least after you’ve downed four flaming mai tais). But while scuzz-covered Toronto rockers Fake Palms hardly seem like the types to be strategically capitalizing on boutique cocktail trends, band founder Michael le Riche seems well familiar with the sensation of being caught between the world in which he exists and the one he wishes to inhabit.
Le Riche represents a bridge between divergent Toronto indie rock narratives. His former band, the Darcys, were signed to Broken Social Scene’s Arts & Crafts imprint, and, prior to a lineup shake-up last year that’s cast the group’s future in doubt, were being groomed as the label’s next-gen art-rock lynchpins. But with his new full-time concern, le Riche takes a detour down the burning-embered trail blazed by local art-punk heroes Metz to join the freak scene at Buzz Records, whose name is as reflective of the label’s rising profile as its raucous roster’s overheated amplifiers.
Biography by Stuart Berman
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