“The Dead Inside” is the latest single from Palm Ghosts and arrives ahead of the band’s latest album, Lifeboat Candidate, out 19 March.
The band’s Joseph Lekkas says of the song, “It’s sonically influenced by three decades of music: 1990s drum and bass sounds mixed with 1970s funk and 1980s post-punk. The drums were based on a James Brown groove and were entirely recorded on an iPhone 6 in New Jersey and emailed to Nashville. We pieced the song together with the drums and arpeggiated synth as the centerpiece, then added call-and-response guitars and vocals. It’s equally dancey and menacing.”
True to Lekkas’ words, “The Dead Inside” emerges as a grooving bit of dance music with plenty of darkness at the edges, a collage/collision of varied influences that add up to a song that is as moving as it is heart-stopping. Recalling the long night of the soul sounds of Joy Division and Gang of Four while moving while thoroughly contemporary, Palm Ghosts prove that the dead (inside) can indeed dance.