(Credits: Ele Marchant)
Mon 29 September 2025 12:00, UK
It’s always exciting coming across a new band that you love, which is exactly what happened when I heard Picture Parlour for the first time about a year ago.
Like a lot of their fans, the first track I came across was ‘Norwegian Wood’, which was a beautiful track that perfectly showcased all of the great features of the band. The guitar work, their use of atmosphere and excellent songwriting abilities can be heard in every second. But one of the standout factors is lead singer Katherine Parlour’s excellent vocals.
There is something ingrained in her voice that you don’t hear very much these days. It’s sweet-sounding, she can carry a tune just like the rest of them, but then you have some gravel in there, which gives the band an edge. They glide gleefully alongside glam without fully having to throw themselves into it.
All of these different musical elements come together and make Picture Parlour one of the best modern bands who are making and performing rock music. They are true to a style which is reminiscent of the origins of rock, but then it also sounds incredibly modern and unmistakably now. It’s an incredibly difficult balance to strike but one that they do wonderfully.
I love their sound so much that anyone who has watched the band with me or who has had the displeasure of me relentlessly chewing their ear off about how great Picture Parlour are will know how much I compare them to Led Zeppelin. Yes, I can already hear my fellow Zeppelin fans getting angry at the comparison, but the voice, the layering, the guitars, the lightning which is bottled up and stored into every single note is comparable to Zeppelin, so much so that I have personally made it my aim to convince Picture Parlour to cover the great rock band.
Led Zeppelin first discovered their iconic sound when they rehearsed in a basement in Chinatown. At first, they were confused about what to play, but once they stumbled across an old Yardbirds tune, they knew exactly what kind of music they should have been playing.
“I remember the little room, all I can remember it was hot and it sounded good – very exciting and very challenging,” said Robert Plant, “Because I could feel that something was happening to myself and to everyone else in the room. It felt like we’d found something that we had to be very careful with because we might lose it”.
I don’t know where Picture Parlour’s first rehearsal took place, but I can’t imagine it was too dissimilar. Maybe it’s my music-loving mind that wants to believe the band came across their sound almost immediately, as if the universe had put them all in the same room together and allowed things to line up perfectly, but the truth is, a lot more work probably went into it than that. Regardless, the moment all these musical elements came together for the first time, it must have been a pretty magical experience.
There are plenty of Led Zeppelin songs that Picture Parlour could cover, but given the bands ability to perform in a way which is both stripped back and full on, one of the best tracks they could play would be the 1969 hit ‘Babe I’m Gonna Leave You’, The instrumentation and vocal delivery on this song would be perfect for Picture Parlour, and simply put, it’s a cover that needs to happen.
One day, I’ll be standing at the band’s gig, and they’ll announce they’ve been working on a cover that they’re keen on playing. The subtle guitar fades in, and that fragile yet powerful delivery of the word “Babe,” bleeds into every corner of the room. There are very few covers in the world that need to happen, but this is one of them.
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