The Parlour – Picture Parlour

By Lucy Kerr

Click here to read our interview with Picture Parlour earlier this year 

Picture Parlour, formed of singer-guitarist Katherine Parlour and guitarist Ella Risi, provide 39 minutes of indie rock and roll enthusiasm with their debut album, The Parlour. From bouncing earworms like ‘Talk About It’, to reminiscent building rock ballads like ‘Used to Be Your Girlfriend’, the duo ensures their newest release will keep you enraptured from start to finish.

I was highly anticipating getting to listen to this album upon its release (I’m easily delighted by a rock band fronted by women). In the following weeks I’ve found myself drawn back to it again and again with the album only growing on me. The combination of the high energy, addictively rhythmic instrumentals with lyrics that alternated between the abstractly poetic and the brutally honest made for an album as fun and it was compelling.

After releasing their debut single, ‘Norwegian Wood’, in 2023, the band spoke to NME and emphasized the importance that playing live gigs had on the band. The energy and inspiration the band finds from playing live comes across clear as day in this debut. The album feels perfectly crafted to provide fans with electrifying sing-along moments and plenty of opportunities to dance your heart out (or maybe headbang along if that's more your speed). 

Nowhere is this influence captured more perfectly than in the album's opening track, ‘Cielo Drive’. Static sounds quickly give way to several catchy guitar riffs and a building drum beat that will have you moving along before you know it. The cherry on top is Parlour’s rasping, playfully melodramatic vocals, which switch from the rapidly spat out verses, to the belted out pre-chorus, before finally teasingly delivering the chorus. The song creates an addictive anticipation as the instrumental builds and breaks down, then builds again as Parlour increases her intensity and throws in her share of vocal riffs to compliment Risi’s soaring guitar playing. It's easy to picture a live audience going crazy for a track like this.

Although the duo creates a sound and image that’s distinctly their own, it’s hard not to notice the blend of both 2000s indie and 70s classic rock that influenced the record. Tracks like ‘24 Hour Open’ and ‘Neptune 66’, with their relentlessly thumping guitar, and the cheeky dialogue between Parlour’s vocals and Risi’s guitar playing feel straight out of an early Arctic Monkeys or White Stripes album, while power ballads like ‘Who’s There To Love Without You’ and ‘Ronnie’s Note #3’, and the duo’s penchant for instrumental breakdowns, seem heavily inspired by the hits of Led Zeppelin. Even the album cover evokes another 70s classic rock act, with the duo reaching toward each other, both dressed boot-leg, wide lapel 70s style suits, calls to mind the cover of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. 

The Parlour’s greatest strength lies in the fact that it feels like an album unafraid of fully embracing its indie rock sound. Not softening it, diluting it, or trying to make it a gimmick. The rolling drums, persistent guitar, and shouting vocals don’t betray any hints of doubt for this album's musical identity, an impressive display of confidence not successfully pulled off by most debut albums.

The one critique that lingered as I listened through Picture Parlour’s debut dovetails off of this strength. In its sonic certainty, the album in some parts lacks enough musical variation to give it very much depth. By the time you reach the final track, ‘The Travelling Show’, Risi’s sharp guitar riffs and Parlour’s dramatically stylized vocals are so distinctive that it becomes hard to ignore how little they change over the album. Yet this occasionally one note quality seems hard to avoid in a debut album where a band is trying to establish a recognizable sound. 

If this is what Picture Parlour had to deliver for their debut, I’ll be eagerly looking forward to seeing what else they have in store for audiences.