Palace: "There's got to be a bit of heart in there"

Ahead of their album release [Which, erm, landed earlier this month - Ed], Palace frontman Leo Wyndham reflects on a super personal debut.

Congrats on your debut album - has ‘So Long Forever’ been a long time in the works?

Yeah it feels like it has! We've been together as a band for three years now. It's been a mad journey, and we've already had some of the most awesome adventures, things we'll always remember and bore people to death about when we're old and wrinkly. Now we just want the album out. It's kind of agonising having it all finished and it sitting there hidden away. I might just leak it now actually fuck it.

What was going on with you guys during its creation? Were there any notable events that influenced the record?

A few. The album feels like a real sum up of the last three years. The songs were very much written in the present moment, absorbing everything going on bad or good. I personally have been through some weird tough stuff over the last few years and that very much makes its way onto the record. There's also certain songs which are predictions of future situations which now have come true. The song 'So Long Forever' was about an idea of breaking up with someone and having this kind of 'fuck you I'm out of here' attitude. It's an angry farewell to someone you adore. That's all kind of happened to me now since that song was written. It's strange I never wrote it thinking I would feel those words so truly. I now kind of get it.

Is it a stronger record for being a bit personal, do you think?

I think if you can't be personal on a record then there's almost no point really. I mean sometimes it's fun to write assuming a character of some sort, which I definitely do sometimes. But there's got to be a bit of heart in there otherwise there's nothing for people to connect with. For us it's so important really that it's all real stuff with real feeling, whether it makes it stronger I don't know! That probably all sounds really emo… FUCK.