Peasant
Shady Retreat
Paper Garden; 2010
Guest Contributor: Jen Broadwell
I’m driving down a curvy two-lane highway in Northern Michigan. It’s dark and the trees on either side encase me. This is where I am within the music anyway. If you’re like me, songs often take you back to a different time and place in your life. They can remind you of your past. Usually, I go back with an old song and remember a specific moment when it blew my mind. Sometimes, however, one listen to a new one can send me into a reverie of what went on before. Such is the case with “Thinking” by Damien DeRose (who operates under the moniker of Peasant), a stirring track on his new record – Shady Retreat.
“Thinking” invokes an elusive feeling via its quick fade-in and monotonous chord layering. Its dreamy synthesizers and other lo-fi pulsations relieve it of potential piano tedium, while the vocals hover in further synchronization. The words “We ain’t been all wrong in our thinking,” advise me not to throw away the ingredients just because the pie did not turn out. We don’t always have to start from scratch. Sometimes it’s not all bad.
Forlorn melodies and a surfeit of disheartening lyrics frame this album into a picture of loneliness and sorrow. I find parts of the picture to be emotionally captivating, such as the beautifully minimal “Slow Down” and its lofty, western-drawling guitar. Similar to the way Iron and Wine can set a mood, this song renders sensitivity to feelings of distress or grief. I envision the prologue of “Slow Down” as the perfect overdub to muted action noise within a movie.
I see the principle character driving away into the vast distance of a North Dakota bean field. Or, slowly he departs from his small west Texas town—the only thing he’s ever known. No longer will he live and breathe his high school football team. As a whole, however, this picture fails to move me. I grow tired and lose interest in songs like “Into the Woods” and “Hard Times” as they exasperate their sullen qualities.
Not until song number three do we hear any simple drumming or happy piano playing. The beginning of “Well Alright” actually sounds a lot like She & Him. Imaginatively, I begin to hear Zooey Deschanel’s playfully rich voice. Again, despite the satisfying change in accompaniment, DeRose starts to tell a story laden with misfortune in a self-piteous way and I feel like switching the ole iPod over to She & Him’s Volume One. This is not to say that all depressing music is boring or irritating. On the contrary, I am often drawn to such situations. “Well Alright” just does not possess the necessary gravitational qualities.
The full, heartfelt airing of such thoughts displays vocal purities and a raw completion that deserves to be recognized. Furthermore, I appreciate DeRose’s examination of a number of indefinable and irreversible snags that can arise within the single most complicated and encumbered aspiration of life—The Relationship. Ultimately though, I find Shady Retreat a little bit on the dull side, regardless of the occasional drum pattern and twang of the electric guitar. They bode well against the despondent nature of this album, but the imbalance is too great.
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Jen Broadwell is a music blogger from Houston, TX who runs the site Music Artiste. She enjoys attending local show and writing scene reviews and interviews. She also enjoys indie festivals and national indie shows and often posts her thoughts on such events, along with new music videos. Since her hobby doesn’t pay the bills, she works for the University of Houston in Development.