Stream: The Gooch Palms, ‘Ask Me Why’

Kevin Bronson on September 14th, 2016

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The Gooch Palms rattle a lot of bones for a bare-bones two-piece, and ever since the duo of Leroy Macqueen and Kat Friend pulled up stakes in their native Newcastle, Australia, in early 2015 and moved to Los Angeles, they’ve been making fans wherever earplugs are sold. They call their garage-rock “shit-pop,” which sounds a lot better uttered with an Aussie accent; their songs, 3 1/2 minutes max, are like big wads of bubblegum chewed really hard. The sweetness never wanes over the 13-track “Introverted Extroverts,” their second album, which was made with producer Bill Skibbe (The Kills, Jacuzzi Boys, Protomartyr) and self-released this summer. The title refers to the duo’s dual personas — they say they are homebodies when they’re not playing a show and outgoing on stage. Well, “outgoing” kind of sells them short. They’re kind of a hoot. They are, they say, “either fun-loving party animals or completely isolated freaks who hate the outside world.” They’re also do-it-yourselfers who started their own label, Summer Camp, to release their music and tried things like the 8-bit animation in the video for “Don’t Look Me Up.” Chew on it a while.

||| Stream: “Ask Me Why” and “Tiny Insight”