Needle Paw by Nai Palm Album Review

This was the very first time that I have been exposed to work by Nai Palm, so I went in completely blind. The album, Needle Paw, was an experience. This album was released on October 20, 2017. At first, glance looking at the run time surprised me. The album contains 13 songs and is about one hour long. Some of these songs were longer than I’m used to. The songs that I normally listen to are around 2 to 3 minutes but most of these songs lasted around 5 minutes. The longest track in this album, “Blackstar / Pyramid Song/ Breathing Underwater (feat. Amadou)” was 9 minutes long. There were some songs in this album however that could have been improved if they were cut down. 

Listening to the first song was very shocking because I was not sure what I was listening to. The first song, however, did not sound cohesive with the rest of the album so it took me out a little but it got tied in at the end because it was split into two parts. Aside from the first and the last song everything else had a similar sound. Most of the time the songs would seamlessly transition between one another which I appreciated. That is something that I enjoy when it comes to the album, when you don’t even notice it had moved on to a different song, I will eat that up. 

All of the songs were very focused on the melodies and the only instrument I was able to hear was a guitar. It all had a very acoustic sound which is something I think I would hear at a coffee shop. Nai focuses a lot on vocals and puts a heavy emphasis on them. There were so many harmonies and the way they used their vocal tone was very impressive. There were moments where Nai would use a lot of base which I enjoyed the most. However, I did notice that for a lot of songs there were not a lot of lyrics. They mostly filled the time with the guitar and harmonies. And when lyrics were used there was so much repetition. 

The song with the most Spotify plays was “Crossfire/ So Into You” with around twelve thousand plays and I understand why. It quickly becomes one of my favorites from the album along with “Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)”. These were the two songs that stood out to me throughout this whole album, they were not as slow as the rest and were a little more upbeat. Something that I also wanted to talk about that I think is also important to the album is the artwork. The cover is a simple black and white image of a woman and I think the art style of it is really beautiful. 

If I were to describe to someone this album as stripped-down acoustic indie music with elements of jazz. This album was not my cup of tea, but I can see how others might enjoy Needle Paw.