Penny Lame - “Nothing’s Wrong”

Photo by Caleb Herring

Los Angeles-based Penny Lame has found herself on our blog with her latest release, “Nothing’s Wrong.” While it’s fairly obvious that we do not often veer so closely to alt rock, please allow us to explain why we’ve made an exception:

Although the music on our blog is oftentimes on the mellower end of the musical spectrum, we grew up listening to ‘90s music, such as bands like Nirvana et al. And what first caught our ear with “Nothing’s Wrong” was the drum production– we are not saying that Dave Grohl played on this song, but we’re also not not saying that Dave Grohl played on this song. What we have here is a similar mixing palette to In Utero, and it sounds as though Penny Lame has borrowed Steve Albini’s playbook when dialing in these drum tones. Of course, this will make more sense once you’ve heard it…

Please do not let all this talk of drums outshine the guitars, because these beasts are massive as well– a giant wall of sound that could crush us all like ants, but settles, instead, for entertaining the hell out of us. The sound is quite colossal, yet atop it all sits the unrelenting vocal stylings of Penny Lame– focused enough to be melodic, yet powerful enough to level an entire sea of people once this thing hits the stage. We very often rely on music to drive us toward introspection, but “Nothing’s Wrong” is the kind of track that you crank to ten in order to drown out the rest of world and spend about four minutes in the land of Penny Lame.

-TM