‘The way I survive, the way I breathe, is making art’

“Fever dream, the lights are fading. Take my hand to neverland, you'll see, we can be free. We can be anything, just you and me,” Remington Leith roars in his beautifully hoarse voice, full of sheer emotion. Sebastian Danzig plays the guitar as challenging the instrument’s soul itself, while Emerson Barrett transforms the drum set in front of him into one ultimate heartbeat that makes us feel so utterly alive.

Ecstatic fans have gathered to see Palaye Royale’s show in Munich. And the brothers – affectionately known as “the boys” – make up this unique rock band from Las Vegas that has been turning pits in Europe into surreal worlds between heaven and hell during their tour.

‘Fever Dream’, the title track off their latest album, is one of many they have chosen to play at the Munich show. With the surging crowd, the heat in the pit, the dense stage smoke and the three Palaye Royale figures moving on stage like otherworldly messengers, you cannot help but wonder if this is even real at all – if maybe, just maybe, you have indeed been caught up in Neverland, in a feverish dream of your own.

“The shows have been crazy,” Barrett, co-founder and drummer of the iconic rock’ n’ roll extravaganza, says - casually sitting on a shelf in one of the production rooms before the concert, swinging his legs and tinkling on his guitar.

“I really enjoy it. I think it is one of the first tours in a while that I have actually been happy to be here.

“I’m obviously very grateful for what we have built, and for the fans. But there has been a point in my life where I hated everything and everyone, including myself. I feel like in the last few months, it has been some kind of rebirth for me. It’s important to find happiness because it’s so easy to be sad, and you must focus on the good,” he says in his honest, touching manner.

The reinvigorating energy and feeling of liveliness the band and fans share during the show have only intensified, even though Palaye Royale has been on stage almost every night for months now.

For Barrett, the moment when the entire crowd is united by their music and can sing along every word of their songs is nothing less than a spiritual feeling.

“There is something about it that feels like time and space stop for a moment. Everyone in the room is there for a reason of their own choosing, but in the grand scheme of it, there’s one collective emotion. There’s nothing but love and appreciation in that room and everyone can feel like it’s a safe place and a family of sorts.”

If anything, the shows become crazier and wilder every time.

Into the unknown

“Recently I started screaming with Remington – that’s why my voice is the way it is,” Barrett says with a laugh. For the band as well as for the fans, concerts are trips into the unknown.

At the same time, Palaye Royale’s music has always been an essential outlet for the thunderstorm of emotions the three bandmates do not want to bury within themselves, but set free into a world of like-minded people.

“Art, music, creation in general, have always been our version of therapy. For the longest time in my life, especially when I was younger, nobody cared what I had to say. Ever,” Barrett tells us.

“But the walls and my sketchbook cared what I had to say. So, I used them for an infinite influx of my thoughts coming out and I was able to get certain things out and look at certain ideas. I feel like music has always been the vessel for a lot of things in our lives; next to our clothing lines, cosmetic stuff and my artwork as well.”

He not only composes, writes songs, produces and plays them, but he has also been drawing for the last 10 years.

“I didn’t quite know what I was doing at first, but then over the course of 10 years, it revealed itself to be this world of ‘Obsidian’.”

‘Obsidian’ is the fictive world of the band’s graphic novel series, which started with the first novel ‘The Bastards’.

“’Obsidian’ encapsulates the band, and the novels are like a fictitious historical accounting of our universe.”

Within this narrative framework that allows the Palaye Royale members to express their emotions and experience freely, the latest album ‘Fever Dream’ takes up a paramount role. For this album, it was the first time in years – since the ‘Boom Boom Room’ album – that the band had time to work on their ideas for longer than just a few weeks or months.

The process to create the album took about a year and a half, and the band used the Covid-19 pandemic for a bit of calm in their creative process.

“We set up a studio at our house and worked all hours of the night and day, really crafting something that we felt individually as artists. And it grew our relationship as brothers as well, starting to respect each other more,” Barrett recounts.

Beautifully delicate blend

The resulting piece of art was definitely worth the time: 15 tracks compose a beautifully delicate blend of pain and sorrow with an energetically life-approving resilience. Especially songs like ‘No Love in LA’, ‘Paranoid’, ‘Broken’, and ‘Punching Bag’ are widely known in the international rock community. The album is also a climax in the band’s artistic development.

“It really is an incredible thing to see an artist progress through the course of something. What a terrible thing to be the greatest version of yourself at the beginning of you,” Barrett says enthusiastically.

“I think there is an intrinsic quality in discovering yourself as you write, as opposed to having a team of writers or stylists who tell you what your image and sound are supposed to be. An artist must bleed for their work, where this is all they know, this is who they are,” he says.

“So, I think just naturally – over the course of growing up and finding things and having life experiences – we are able to write better and craft our image.” Barrett is sure ‘Fever Dream’ is the best work the band has ever done. “It has encapsulated everything that we have ever done in our lives and then refined it and picked out the best of it.”

Released last October, ‘Fever Dream’ epitomises the pandemic, “when life did not feel real”, Barrett says.

He has done deep research into simulation theory and started to do world-building.

“If I, as one individual, can sit in my kitchen and create a new, somewhat photo realistic world, imagine what someone in their kitchen can do in 50 years!

“So, if this life is a dream, it might as well be the most beautiful dream you’ve ever had.”

He pauses for a second. “And to do everything you ever wanted. Say all the things that you need to say. Experience everything that you want to experience. So – I think this life is a fever dream. We just kinda wrote about that.”

Haunted house

Not to forget the somewhat supramundane elements that left their mark on the creation of the album. Barrett narrates with a grin that they lived in a haunted house at the time. Once the home of a French murderer and later of a girl who died of an overdose, the band claims to have heard and seen ghosts in the house.

“We would invite friends for parties and they kept saying they saw a girl in a white dress on the stairs. And on a certain Hertz frequency with my technical equipment, I could hear a French man talking in the other room. So there was this element of these ghostly characters.”

He smiles, thinking for a moment. “I think you gotta make friends with your demons, though; sometimes they are very cool.”

The way Palaye Royale is so perceptive towards the surreal, the immaterial, mysterious and painfully emotional has been crafted throughout their lives from early on.

“My mom engineered us like a computer this way,” Barrett laughs. “Our toys were art and playing chess. And it was not until later in my life that I realised not everyone does this.

“But I am very grateful for what she instilled in us when we were very young: I can give you a gift, not a bicycle or anything like that. A gift that can never be taken away from you.

“You can be poor, you can be rich – it does not matter, you have that gift. The gift of creativity, music, art. The way I survive, the way I breathe, is making art.”

For the band, music is a mirror of the soul. A reflection of the inner life that is torn between pains so very hard to bear, and the love for true expression, for the deeply felt beauty of art, and the ecstasy of shared inspiration.

“I like it when art is left up to the interpretation of the listener. You are not fully told how to feel or what to believe. But we indeed are taking from our own personal experiences of pain in the songs, and we have had so much pain individually,” Barrett says as he starts playing on his guitar again. “The deepest, most terrific scars are the ones you cannot see. So, if you are able to turn that tragedy into something beautiful and inspire others who feel the same way – this is so important, passing the baton to other generations. “When we meet younger musicians, that is the new generation: You have to inspire them, and give them an element of magic to take away and grow up with, and then expand on that, and I hope – I think this is why we are alive.”

Oblivion

The perfect embodiment of this conceptual love for music is the song ‘Oblivion’.

“Oh, I love that song,” Barrett says. “It’s my most favourite song ever written. If you asked me if there was one Palaye Royale song to ever be remembered by, it would be ‘Oblivion’.”

It was formed out of a graphic novel Barrett did soundtracks to, and one of the songs he wrote was titled ‘Death Note’.

This six-minute track was where the idea came from.

“I showed it to the boys, and they liked one part of it, and we stripped away the rest of what I worked on and broke it down,” Barrett says. “I decided no drums at all. It must be special. Piano and then Remington’s incredible, emotional voice. There is something about this that is so magical. It is hard not to cry.”

It becomes even more special when the band plays the calm, heartbreakingly sad song during a highly energetic, pumped-up show – a striking contrast?

“I think this is how we all are, though. In our show, we speed up, we put the emotional rollercoaster of life into an hour and 20 minutes. We all go through that. It is like the seven stages of grief – that’s our show,” Barrett notes with a smile.

In this conglomerate of sounds and emotions, how do the brothers shine through with their different personalities?

“Sheer force,” he says, laughing heartily.

“Lots of screaming, lots of throwing things. No, we have gotten better at expressing ourselves. We obviously write songs together – but I think the best way we have been doing it recently is to go off on your own, express what you feel, and then bring it to the brothers and we all work on it. It goes for all of us: This is something I want to express, and then we make changes and alterations together. It is like an open project.”

Of course, there are also brotherly disagreements. Barrett nods.

“All the time. It is the whole tug of war, for better or for worse. But that is why I love art. Because no one tells you what to do. Every decision is the correct decision.”

Costume party

Now, who are the Palaye Royale brothers? Who is Emerson Barrett – aside from the star celebrity figures anybody can see on stage, as individual personalities? What’s their story? Barrett reaches for his phone and smiles.

“Let me read you a Franz Kafka quote, it will answer your question: ‘I was ashamed of myself when I realised life was a costume party and I attended with my real face’. I learnt that very early on,” he says quietly as he stares off into middle distance.

“I dropped out of school when I was 16, and I was assuming that the world was very acceptive of expression, and youth – and here is my soul. That is not the way it is,” he laughs a little bitterly. “There is this kind of costume party that we all must be part of, and play your persona out of safety. It’s like wearing armour – because if you show the purest, realest version of yourself, you will be destroyed. But when you find like-minded people, you can reveal that.

“With our hardcore fanbase, we have these secret little pathways to lead you down, and this is where we take off our masks and reveal ourselves. Which is a safety thing. There have been many times that I revealed the real me and it has felt terrifying.”

For Barrett, this terror is most keenly felt on social media. “It’s a place where if you are too open, you are destroyed.” That is why Palaye Royale has created their own platforms like their Discord or their ‘Royal Council’ – “almost like our own world, like a hub, like a community, a central landing page for our fanbase”. Will Barrett take off his mask during their show tonight?

“Ah, I guess we will find out.”

With Palaye Royale’s music, it becomes clear that rock’n’roll is not dead – as a matter of fact, it is very much alive. With their unique, authentic and highly complex and expressive music that is contrasted with commercially successful, superficial mainstream music, it would not be far-fetched to say that the band deserves more credit and appreciation for their contribution to the genre.

Barrett, however, sees this in a very relaxed manner.

“I think time will tell. As respectfully as I can say this, I think there is a lot of things taking place nowadays in creativity and art industry that will not stand the test of time; that is a very brief shine of light in vast darkness.

“I think through our history, no matter what generation you are in, if you are expressing things directly from your soul and trying to inspire others with your experiences - whether it be pain or happiness - that’s what will be remembered. I am very happy with where I am in my life, and obviously things could be bigger, things could be smaller. I’m just very grateful every day to wake up with a purpose and have people who care.”

Search for beauty

And tonight, as the last heartbreakingly beautiful tunes fade at the end of the show, Barrett stands on stage, with a bronze mask on, a bouquet of blood-red roses in one hand, throwing them into the cheering crowd, one finger stretched to the sky like a divine gesture of soul – in this moment, we feel like we get a glimpse of him in his true revelation, and of the band in one ecstatic moment of true connection.

“Always search for beauty – because it is within you,” he says to us, in one last message to his fans. “There is enough silence and darkness in the world, and you are the light. I am very grateful for all of you – I love you very much.”

The lights in the concert hall flicker one last time, a cool breath of fresh air soars above our heads, the bass line comes to a breathtaking halt – and in the moment as the Palaye Royale brothers give the crowd a last glance and leave the stage without looking back, it feels like we have all woken from a deep fever dream.

“We can be anything and everything we want to be if we believe. Letting go of what we used to know, fall asleep and make believe with me. We're gonna be alright.”

Yes, with you, Palaye Royale, we are indeed going to be alright.