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Palberta billed themselves once as âNew Yorkâs weirdest.â As anyone whoâs heard them beat the Bee Gees to death can testify, theyâve more than earned the title. This wildly experimental punk trio has earned critical comparisons to Captain Beefheart and Can; now, after a near-decade of unstructured punk cacophony, they are âfocused on making music that people [can] not only sing along to but get stuck in their heads.â On
Palberta5000, they accomplish this latter goal, but only through brute force. This band weakens a series of good-to-great songs by repeating a single lyric, without any variation whatsoever, for two to three minutes. A couple of these will definitely be more fun in the pit, but in the absence of pits and the abundance of lonely living rooms,
Palberta Blends Big-Tent Pop and Art-Rock on âPalberta5000â
The New York trio remains gleefully odd on an album recorded in just four days.
Nina Ryser, Ani Ivry-Block, Lily Konigsberg of Palberta trade instruments and sing in tight harmonies.Credit.Chloe Carrasco
By Lindsay Zoladz
Jan. 21, 2021
Palberta is a three-piece rock band without a guitarist, a bassist or a drummer. Or, to put it another way, Palberta is a band with three of each of those things: Onstage and on its records, Ani Ivry-Block, Lily Konigsberg and Nina Ryser trade instruments between nearly every song and harmonize with a near familial tightness that makes the very notion of a frontperson seem absurd. âIt kind of feels like we share a brain in a lot of ways, at this point,â Konisberg said in 2018. It kind of sounds like that, too.