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Nina Ryser, Ani Ivry-Block and Lily Konigsberg don’t take themselves too seriously, and that’s what makes their band, Palberta, so much fun to listen to. The NYC-based indie rock outfit’s fifth studio album Palberta5000<\/em>, like much of their previous work, is disjointed, chaotic, and sometimes disorienting – in the best way possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The album features the kind of lo-fi sound you’d imagine emanating from a Brooklyn warehouse show, with songs inspired by the relationship between the members, both as bandmates and as friends. The song “Before I Got Here,” for instance, mimics an argument between two people, then settles into soothing instrumentals, conveying that “you made it, you communicated, and now you’re still friends,” Konigsberg explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We’re three women, and groups of three are really hard,” she says. “We had to figure out how to spend a lot of time together on the road and make music together without talking over each other or anyone feeling left out, and we have grown a lot in accepting and working through our issues. I feel like that made the music clearer because we can write together more easily.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a larger sense, the album deals with connection and community, something that’s become elusive to many in recent times. In “Corner Store,” they sing in discordant vocal tracks about meeting up with your friends at a local bodega, adding a fictional storyline about seeing someone they know on the cover of the newspaper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The line between reality and nonsense is blurred throughout the album, where the band used animals as plot devices just for the fun of it. On “Cow,” they build a story around the act of taking home a bovine buddy, and in “Red Antz,” they describe running over the insects on a drive. “We’re oftentimes singing about feelings that are there, but maybe fictional scenarios that kind of bring about those feelings that maybe someone could relate to,” says Ivry-Block.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We use absurdist combinations of words, and then they come to take on meaning when we put them together and process them,” Konigsberg adds. “There was really no reason to include so many animals. It was a surprise to all of us.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n