Behind the Album: Palette Knife’s Keyframe - Interview with Alec Licata + TOP8 Nerd-Core Influences

TOP8 Scene
2 days ago
5 min read

Palette Knife Keyframe Album Review — Photos: Julia Saulé, Goodman

You thought we were done with Palette Knife? Think again. This band will have you wishing you had discovered them sooner with how rad their fresh release ‘Keyframe’ is. It’s so good that we had to pick the Palette Knife brain about the new album.

Nerd-Core-Mid-West-Emo band Palette Knife is: Alec Licata (guitar/vocals/the mind behind the lyrics), Aaron Queener (drums/screams), and Chris McGrath (bass/backup vocals). Something admirable to us is that Aaron and Alec do all the artwork and designs for the band. What can’t this band do? “Aaron and I started out as an acoustic pop punk cover band in the late 2010’s at a local brewery in Columbus, OH,” Alec tells us that Chris eventually joined in, and they soon became the band we all know and love today: Palette Knife

So… what is Nerd-Core-Mid-West-Emo? Well, Palette Knife is here to tell you exactly what that means, and it has never sounded so good. Alec explains it as “Riffs! And catharsis! We want to create emotional storytelling in our music while lyrically leaning into the magical realism provided by our interests in video games, scifi, fantasy, and tabletop gaming. Using these interests to color our writing.”

All of that inspiration is apparent in their lyrics. We couldn’t help but notice the plethora of game-inspired words in this release, especially in songs like "Phoenix Down” and “Codex”. It takes a lot for a band to be able to use that language to execute emotions, but Palette Knife hit the nail on the head. “I like to use my interests as a way to thesaurize my writing: substituting mundane words for fantastical ones that both contribute to the original line, while also adding its own connotations for those who know the terms.” In our opinion, this is one of the most unique styles of writing in the scene. “Phoenix Down is a great example; I’m talking about running out of a Final Fantasy item that revives party members. What if we lose the battle? Originally, we discussed a backstory to keyframe that involved magically powered mechsuits we would use to fight space dragons; so I tried to take any opportunity to replace a word with a magical one”.

Alec Licata of Palette Knife’s TOP8 Nerd-Core Influences:

palette knife top8 nerd core picks including emperor x aura battler dunbine persona 5 built to spill forests final fantasy magic the gathering building gundam

Emperor X: “100%. Perhaps not in his political satire or production, but definitely in terms of sci-fi realism. Chad is the goat.”
Dunbine: “‘80s Anime. Medieval mech suits powered by magic and vibes.”
Persona 5: “Heavily inspired the concept of masking oneself.”
Built to Spill: “Nerds.”
Forests: “Riffs, silliness.”
Final Fantasy 13 and FF7 remakes: “I was playing a lot of Final Fantasy, which influenced various terms on the record (faultsiphon, phoenix down, stagger).”
Magic: The Gathering “Summoning sickness.”
Building Gundam: “Go build some gunpla with your friends right now! Getting into model building in the 2020’s is what kicked off the entire album theme for us. It’s so meditative.”

'Keyframe has a very playful, rhythm-driven sound to it, yeah, it’s a Midwest Emo/ Pop-Punk-adjacent project, but in reality? Palette Knife is building a lane of their own. This is a huge factor in what makes the band special and why we see them going extremely far in this scene. Blending genres that you never thought would complement each other seems like a difficult task, but somehow, Palette Knife has cracked the code.

“I think these moments are the most fun we have when writing and are a core pillar of our sound. Sonically, we tend to really ride that line with pop-punk, so we’re always looking to mathrock / hardcore / jazz for rhythmic inspiration to keep ourselves from being pigeon-holed by a single genre. The bridge of ‘Sleep Paralysis’ is a great example: switching up to a disco section because it’s unconventional but really works with how slowly it builds. We do find it difficult when trying to tempo map a crazy time signature change like on the bridge of ‘Faultsiphon’.” Though it may be difficult for them, they’ve clearly perfected what they do.

If you’re new to Palette Knife, or haven’t listened to Keyframe yet, (what are you waiting for?!) Alex suggests these picks to get you started:

‘Sleep Paralysis’: “I think Sleep Paralysis has such a tasty variety of sounds in such a neat package, it’s hard not to recommend—it’s definitely the demo I kept coming back to the most.
‘Prototype’: “I also have to push Prototype. We dropped this track first because we felt it exemplified the blueprint of this new era of palette knife.”

No matter what track you start with first, we’ve said it before: ‘Keyframe’ feels like one of those projects that’s very cohesive from start to finish, it’s a really fun, enjoyable listen, and the band is proud of how it all came together (which they should be.) It’s an extremely well-done body of work from when you first it play, to the second the album fades to silence. From the lyrics to the overall production, it has been a repeat album for us since it came out.

“We’re very proud of how cohesive this record is, given the process. We spent a year tracking the album in two song chunks. We’d hammer out two drum tracks on a Friday, followed by bass, guitar, vocals, and extras over Saturday and Sunday. The bulk of the actual writing occurred playing an acoustic guitar in our apartment, refining the song structures until we were happy with them enough to write full band parts”.

The album is full of themes that deal with identity, isolation, and self-perception, but it wasn’t all intentional. “In ways, it’s a reflection and reaction of my life shortly after New Game+,” Alec explains, “It’s also part of the themes we’re trying to establish with the mechsuits; a suit can be armor, identity, something that empowers you, or a mask you hide behind. It can also be like an exoskeleton to be molted from as you grow.” Their track ‘Limit Break’ leans into just that: identity constantly being rebuilt, from “the mannequin I pose behind the keyframe” to “exoskeletons feel so irrelevant.” It all comes back to shedding the old you as you grow.

With all of the energy this project brings, it closes off with a more toned-down vibe, their track ‘ISS’ is a standout on the album for us, and Alex explains that he’s always been a fan of stripped-down intros and outros, “Putting ISS at the end felt more like a hopeful comedown than something to be placed in the middle of the record,” when we first got a listen of the closer, it instantly felt like the perfect fit and a beautiful comedown from all the excitement. We couldn’t help but notice all of the space imagery laid out in the lyrics, “I wanted to tell the story of the moment you realize you have a romantic spark with someone, and as someone who spends a lot of time soul-searching when out of a relationship, I felt an astronaut stranded on a space station was an appropriate metaphor.”

What’s next for Palette Knife? TOUR!

“If you’re on the East Coast, please come check us out in May on our tour with Stars Hollow! We’re all gonna be in Cleveland, Lansing, and Chicago this spring for a couple of fests and the Footballhead album release.”