Album reviews

PeNNY PeAcH

EGO PARTY

PENNYPEACHJR.BANDCAMP.COM

Have you ever been invited to an Ego Party? Me neither, but I bet they get real loud and standoffish and are filled with folks who are never unsure behind the wheel even when given the murkiest of driving directions. On Penny Peach’s new album, her first full-length and the follow-up to her standout 2021 EP, brain gamez, she presents the soundtrack to her own EGO PARTY.

Album opener “CATACOMBS” is a prog-rocker with a folk song question: “When I go will you rest my bones in the catacombs?” Why? “Because I can’t afford a mausoleum/No, I may not even swing a grave,” Penny Peach (Elly Hofmaier) admits. But she’s quick to add directions: “Save the flowers for your apartment/Just bring a friend and come sing in my cave.” The tune finally transforms into a doom-pop breakdown, featuring a brooding duet of guitar and ethereal flute supplied by Lex Leto.

Throughout the album, Penny Peach performs several call-and-response pairings with different iterations of her own voice, embodying the true spirit of an EGO PARTY. None is more effective than on “WINNER,” a power pop, set-stealing stomper that sways hard and knows it. She follows it with “BLACK ICE,” an ekphrastic blues piece that reminds us that the cool kids always did and still do have black ice air freshener trees hanging from their rear views. It’s certainly hyperbole to say that Penny Peach’s voice sounds like what those little trees smell like, but there it is. (Blake Shaw’s bass solo plays the part of rearview mirror.)

The next two tracks reveal her real vocal range, with the acoustic guitar-and organ-anthem of “AGENCY” and the swinging thrash punk of “NICO.” The latter is all BPM and barre chords. Simply put, it has a lot of strut and, again, it knows it. Which brings us finally to “JESUS PIECE,” an unmatched musical takedown of each and every guitar bro who has tried to mansplain a pedal board to Penny Peach. Here she is in full garage rock vengeance mode, leaning in hard. The second chorus:

I got a Jesus piece on my daisy chain I got a room full of people choking on my name I got a fire in me that you could never touch Oh I swear I’ve already got too much

JAMeS tUtSON

Happy

JAMESTUTSON.BANDCAMP.COM

By the time “EFFORTLESS” arrives, the pitch is at a full fever. It takes a brass and woodwind sendoff to usher the last lingering guests away from the party and out into the dark. EGO PARTY is a sonic salute to an unapologetic swagger, to self-confidence in the pursuit of an identity, performance or otherwise, and more likely both at once. EGO PARTY stands in opposition to hesitancy, absent politeness and self-inflicted joy repression. And somehow, it never once stops being genuinely fun; not once.

At her EGO PARTY, Penny Peach recklessly explores the many varied capabilities of her voice, highlighting its uniquely deft and deeply powerful delivery through this valise of songs. But it’s obvious that throughout the search, she’s always sure of what exactly it is she wants to say. —Avery Gregurich

Fans of James Tutson’s lovely voice, guitar stylings and well-crafted songs will be more than happy with his new release, a six-track recording called Happy. The album, which features Tutson’s longtime collaborator Tyler Carrington on keys and drums and Blake Shaw on bass, is of a piece with his previous work. The songs are R&B and gospel-inflected, with Shaw’s basslines both grounding and propelling each number. The lyrics are consistently thoughtful, and Tutson’s vocals are EGO PARTY IS A SONIc SALUtE tO AN UNAPOLOGEtIc SWAGGEr, tO SELF-cONFIDENcE IN tHE PUrSUIt OF AN IDENtItY, PErFOrMANcE Or OtHErWISE. warm and filled with longing. All of that comes together, for example, on the song “Let You Love Me.” I need to fetter my fear now I need to shackle my shame I need to trust you’re sincere now You need to know I’m the same I need to just let you love me I need to just let you care I need to stop being lonely And just let you know me And take it from there

The intentionality of the alliteration in the opening two lines is balanced by the plainspokenness of the final line of the chorus (and the song): “And take it from there.” One could read the first two lines as the song’s narrator trying just a bit too hard but quickly realizing that if he would “just let” himself accept the simple foundations of a relationship, all could turn out well.

In “I’m Not On My Own,” Tutson successfully adopts the trapping of a slow doo-wop number, injects then with elevated lyrics and then simply sings the hell out of the song—including this verse that seems too thorny to work, but is instead buttery smooth in Tutson’s mouth:

I heard the news sung my lamentations You heard the news and gave your elegy Well I called a dirge for your woeful poem I’m so glad that I’m not on my own

The title track is a slow jam variation on the twist served up by a song like Kelly Clarkson’s

“Since U Been Gone.” Suffice it to say, the singer is not the person feeling the titular emotion. “By and By,” which may be my favorite of the tracks, reminds listeners of Tutson’s ability to co-opt and reshape religious imagery and ideas in engaging ways. “I Need

You Here” is an upbeat follow-up to “Let You Love Me.”

The record closes with “Tomorrow Comes Again,” a song in the style of a singalong worship or campfire song—three verses, each built around a single line. The order of those lines/verses gives the song more power than it might have if the final line were not, “I believe that sorrow has its time.”

That may be true, but even as we acknowledge the inevitability of hard times, we should all be happy that Tutson shares his gift for exploring the intersection of joy and sorrow. —Rob Cline