SXSW 2012

Palomar is a three-woman, one-man outfit that hails from Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Since their inception in 1998, Palomar has released four internationally beloved full-lengths and one EP. Sense & Antisense (out 1/24/12), their fifth LP, was produced by friend Phil Palazzolo (Ted Leo’s Brutalist Bricks and The New Pornographers Together) at Seaside Studios in Brooklyn. Contributing to the album are local stars Charles Bissell of the Wrens (guitarist/vocalist Rachel’s husband), Roman Kuebler of the late Oranges Band, and Jed Smith of My Teenage Stride among others. In the course of their careers, Palomar has toured with such indie-rock greats as Mates of State, Luna, and Spoon and played hundreds of shows. They’ve toured the country several times, admiring the windmills of New Mexico, drinking at the Dixie brewery in New Orleans, and eating tater tots in deserted diamond-mining towns of the Rockies. While plenty of publications have raved about Palomar’s past albums, this is an excerpt from one of Palomar’s favorite press quotes (about All things, forests, Misra Records, 2007): “No one ever let the old girl groups grow up…once they were through singing about boys and cars that was it. Palomar are still learning new things about life, themselves, songs and people, and this album is all the stronger for it.” (DUSTED) Sense & Antisense is an album about just those things: not boys and girls but husbands and wives, and not cars but car payments and re-financing home loans. The album is about the anxiety that comes with sitting in hotel rooms preparing for work meetings; lying awake at night, pregnant and worrying about how having kids might ruin your life; going to high school reunions; the ennui of sifting through relationships to find the ‘right one’ and then living and working with the right one. This is an album about a girl band that grew up.