La Palma, the musical duo of Philly artist Tim Gibbon and D.C. musician Chris Walker formed earlier this year, dropped a new single on Friday titled “Swept Away/Holiday.”
But this is not your typical holiday track.
The song kicks off with a sunny, lazy tropical guitar vibe and Caribbean style percussions and what sound like at first seagulls but it’s a guitar string weeping or some other cool effect.
The song floats along with elements of beachy dream-pop and psych waves. You can almost feel the sun on your face and the warm breezes coming off the ocean.
Right at the mid-point the track transforms and morphs into a series of sound effects – all once again creating that sunny vibe. Towards the end, the track morphs again, this time into a strange little acoustic jam.
Gibbon describes the track best: “It begins with a lushly produced story of a dip in the ocean-turned deep-sea psychic tumult; the track then abruptly flips on its head to a more stripped-down acoustic feel, itching for an elusive holiday escape from the day-to-day grind.”
Because they live in different cities, the duo’s music is created correspondence-style – passing recordings through the cloud to build textured compositions and layers of instruments that glean from everyday sounds and experiences, steeped in beachy psych-pop and indie folk.
Gibbon and Walker are both writers, vocalists, and multi-instrumentalists on the guitar, keyboards, bass, percussion, and programming. Their music definitely falls under the indie rock umbrella, incorporating genres and sub-genres such as psych-pop, indie folk, experimental, bedroom pop, and dream pop.
They met years ago in D.C.’s music scene while playing with bands like Kittyhawk and Let’s French.
The duo has opened for bands like Goodnight Lights and Spelling Reform and are primarily influenced by bands like Animal Collective, Helado Negro, Devendra Banhart, and Melody’s Echo Chamber. We first featured La Palma back in the spring for their debut single.
