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Greta Van Fleet remain the most consistently successful standard bearers for The New Rock’N’Roll. While the mania that greeted them at the tail end of the 2010s has abated, the Michigan band’s three albums to date have still all breached the US Top 10, a feat that Rival Sons, The Struts, Dirty Honey and the rest can only dream of.
Palace For The People – named after North London venue Alexandra Palace, of all places – keeps their end up. Tear It Down and Into The Beginning shake their arena-rock tail feathers splendidly, defined instantly by Josh Kiszka’s rafter-rattling screech, which once again overshadows brother Jake’s impressively protean guitar playing.
The whole thing is overseen by A-list producer Mike Elizondo, whose credits span everyone from Eminem to Mastodon and who gives Palace For The People the kind of gloss that music this self-consciously grand deserves. Although perhaps Elizondo might have told Josh Kiszka to rein it in a little on Play Your Game, a track rendered borderline unbearable by a vocal register that isn’t so much ‘singing’ as ‘child’s tantrum in a supermarket’.
There are some interesting moments. Lost In The Golden (golden what?) uses Middle Eastern scales to create a slightly otherworldly vibe. Best of all is Tough Again, with its wistful look-to-the-West vocals, demolition-hammer drums and swirling strings. It’s their Going To California, When The Levee Breaks and Kashmir all in one.
But it’s hard to not want more out of Greta Van Fleet at this stage. Palace For The People is the fourth album of a career that properly got started in 2016. It’s maybe unfair to draw yet another parallel with Zeppelin, but by the time that band made their fourth album they’d already reinvented themselves twice and then proceeded to serve up one of the greatest albums ever.
Greta Van Fleet clearly aren’t Led Zeppelin, and 2026 couldn’t be more different from 1971 in terms of the musical landscape, but Palace For The People is the work of a band that have found their groove and are sticking to it. That’s fine as far as it goes – Greta Van Fleet continue to make hay at a time when for so many of their peers the sun isn’t shining. But it’s difficult not to want more ambition from a band who clearly have it in them to deliver something spectacular.