Peasant - Shady Retreat

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 olé 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.