Ears Wide Open: Palm Springsteen

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Palm Springsteen
Palm Springsteen

Is 2019 ready for a good ol’ sneering, leering, brash rock ’n’ roll song? No matter, “Hey There Cowgirl,” the new single from L.A.’s cheekily named Palm Springsteen, has arrived, as hedonistic and libido-driven as anything the Strokes (or more similarly, Louis XIV) ever did.

It’s the first official release from the band (frontman Nick Hinman, keyboardist Z Berg, guitarist Aaron Bernards, bassist Noah Gersh and drummer Seth Trump) after soft-releasing a handful of songs dating back to 2017. They toured in support of Foster the People that year, raised some hell at local gigs (including Echo Park Rising) in 2018 and have spent time in the studio with producer Tony Hoffer to finish their album “Trouble in Paradise.”

Swimming in synths, bouncing on bass and punctuated by a caustic guitar riff, “Hey There Cowgirl” ratchets up the dance-rock energy Palm Springsteen displayed on their early single “Sister Sister” (links have vanished, sorry). Then there are the hilariously bad-boy vocals of Hinman.

“As one the first songs written for the project, ‘Hey There Cowgirl’ helped shape the identity of Palm Springsteen,” he says. “Loud, brash, self-aware, self-deprecating, playful and dead fucking serious. I wrote that arpeggiating synth bass line and starting yelling things in a bizarre stream-of-consciousness, creating different characters as I went along. They’re not gender-specific in any way, I always imagined the cowgirl as an old man and the bartender as a dog, so they’re all up for interpretation. I suppose you could say it’s kind of like being at a Halloween party and saying all the wrong things to the right people. Or the right things to the wrong people. But either way, you’re still at a party, so have a little fun, for God’s sake.”

||| Stream: “Hey There Cowgirl”

||| Also: Watch the video here