Most of my favourite memories involve me walking around some regional folk festival in the rain, stumbling upon tents of flannel-clad musicians knocking out a tune on a random assortment of wooden instruments. I don’t know if The Peel have a penchant for flannel but they certainly sound like they do. Hailing from Athens, which I always thought was in Greece but is apparently in Ohio, the trio consist of a fiddle, banjo and guitar, an arrangement of instruments that immediately conjures a pretty accurate image of their sound world.
Though steeped in the sort of American folk tradition you might expect, their music suggests a playful excursion into more avant-garde territories, with Mt. Lookout giving off a distinctly Moondog vibe, replete with lilting strings and vaguely aggressive repetition. It’s all achingly organic, as if it were a document of a (admittedly rather sober) live session, a fact underscored by the rather emphatic proclamation of ‘no-overdubs’ embed in their press release. Playful if never chaotic, The Peel seem to revel in a somewhat understated world of half measures, as if we are listening to the skeleton of a song rather than a ‘finished’ version. Don’t get me wrong, this is in no way a complaint – it is the minimal, unadorned nature of the proceedings that gives their music such power. Subtlety emerges from the shallows, the sounds of the human hands striking string, and the near infinite minor variation that live there, a comforting threshold of character and warmth.
It’s all pretty mesmerising stuff – the sort of thing that neatly juxtaposes a morning commute: a simple, honest call to the charms of nature, a beckoning so at odds with our endless thrust towards modernity. It can feel sometimes like this sort of thing is rather niche – the sort of music that most people quite like in principal but few actively go out of their way to listen to. On the strength of Mt. Lookout, I’d advise you to buck that trend. Don’t worry about whether it’s your sort of thing and just go pick up the album – settle back in a rocking chair on a porch overlooking a lake, possibly whilst wearing moccasins (whatever they are) and hit that big wooden, hand-carved play button.
Links:
The Peel on Instagram: www.instagram.com/thepeelband/
The Peel on Spotify: open.spotify.com/artist/1p9tmEMJGWM9USZjYWQ4Pr
The Peel on Bandcamp: thepeel.bandcamp.com/
The Peel on Apple Music: music.apple.com/us/artist/the-peel/1468394759
Daniel Alexander Hignell-Tully
MEANS 