Today, Pretty Rude—one of many projects from prolific NYC musician James Palko—has announced its debut album, Ripe. Palko has infiltrated Paste‘s taste over the last two years, first with his band Taking Meds’ Dial M For Meds LP and then, in 2024, his breakout record as Jimmy Montague, Tomorrow’s Coffee, which landed on our year-end list of the best albums of 2024. Pretty Rude is a idiosyncratic, back-to-basics detour from Palko’s previous haunts, as he ups the ante on his own eclecticism by stretching into a deviously provocative rock sound.
If you’ve been clued in to his social media over the last month or two, you might know about his obsession with AC/DC. This record so clearly spawned out of that love, with a power-pop twist, and new single “Things I Do” sounds like somebody let young Elvis Costello fool around with distortion pedals. It’s aces work, filled with lush, Queen-like harmonies and in-your-face, tectonic-plate-shifting riffage. If the guitars on “Things I Do” don’t split your head in two, you won’t be able to forget it.
Palko says of “Things I Do”: “I was listening to a lot of ‘One Way Ticket To Hell And Back’ by The Darkness, a song I consider to be one of those perfect ‘form, tempo, arrangement all in one bag’ songs, and I realized what was sticking out to me so much was the acoustic guitar underneath in the second verse. I got so hung up on the way that I felt that I pretty much set out to make ‘Things I Do’ accomplish that same energy.” There’s a Cars influence, and a nod to the distorted guitars from Thin Lizzy’s “Jailbreak.”
In Palko’s words, “Things I Do” is full of classic rock radio influence. “It really came to be a question of ‘How can you keep this fresh while honoring a formula?'” he continues. “It sat around as an instrumental demo for a long time, then I took it on a 10 hour drive from Rochester NY to Chicago with the intention of finishing it. I had just come off a tour the day before Valentine’s Day, drove to see my girlfriend, we made pierogies, packed up all her shit and drove 16 hours back to the East Coast to move in together. Coming off a tour feeling insane and weird and jumping right into this big life milestone was feeling so strangely grounding and calm and perfect, the lyrics fell right out. What’s better than a power-pop-guitar-solo-laden love song? Very few things in my opinion.”
Ripe is out May 16 via SideOneDummy. Watch the music video for “Things I Do” and check out the album artwork below.
