Peggy Sue
(Yep Roc)
Attempting for days to write a review of Peggy Sue's Acrobats, I found the words consistently eluding me. Description and critique avoided me like the plague; not because the latest from Peggy Sue is a terrible record (it is not), but because it is a complex record that defied my every attempt to describe it. If it were an abomination of an album, critiquing it would be easy. I would destroy it with harshness and be done with it, but the layered complexity of its contents posed a challenge.
Produced by John Parish (Sparklehorse, The EELS and PJ Harvey), Acrobats has a sound that is thick as molasses, dense, swirling and at times creepy. The material feeds on the band's influences to create waves that are equal parts PJ Harvey, Heartless Bastards, Carter Family and, most notably, The Breeders. The ominous, dark wave six-minute long opening track "Cut My Teeth" is a pledge to keep a man no matter what ("I made him stay because I could/ And cut my teeth on his good looks") and the strange vibe persists throughout Acrobats as the songs grow better and better.
The trio (Rosa, Olly and Katy) scraped the all-acoustic approach of last year's Fossils and other Phantoms to go electric on Acrobats and the change is astounding. There is a newfound texture to the band, ambience added by electricity and a deeper sense of longing. The songs skip through styles while managing to remain cohesive; there is first wave British alternative ("Cut My Teeth"), death balladry ("Funeral Beat"), a Portishead nod ("Changing and Waiting") and an Appalachian lament ("D.U.M.B.O."), not to mention a fucked-up tale of a severed head ("There Always Was") that closes Acrobats with a bang, not a whimper.
To shorten my tale, Peggy Sue's Acrobats is one of the most scattered, schizophrenic, soul questioning - and beautiful and best records of the year. Give it a spin and see if you can nail it down.
DOWNLOAD: "Cut My Teeth" "D.U.M.B.O." DANNY R. PHILLIPS
