Shady Retreat - Peasant

Shady Retreat

Peasant
Paper Garden Records.

SCQ Rating: 73%

Sleeper hits tend to forecast blockbusters. You know, how Alligator built steady steam over two years before the release of Boxer made the National stars, how Greetings From Michigan paved the way for Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoise, etc. The list goes on and my sole theory behind this trend boils down to how success, however gradual or marginalized, brings out an artist's confidence. As such, blockbusters are often celebrated as being nervier or grandiose due to said album’s ability to focus on the artist's proven strengths as a songwriter, vocalist or arranger. On The Ground moved units and sounded like a sleeper hit; Damien DeRose's aching voice caressing a nerve still sensitive six years after Elliott Smith's death, yet the authenticity of his songs disarmed us of our cynacism.

With Shady Retreat, I admit I expected a blockbuster. Building from On The Ground's "you+me" focused songwriting and supplemented by the increasingly predictable context of an album created in backwoods isolation, Shady Retreat could've continued DeRose's songwriting growth while muscling up on his arrangements. Instead of letting his cabin-based locale motivate these songs toward a striving objective, they instead excuse Shady Retreat's power-outage minimalism. Clocking a mere twenty-eight minutes, Peasant's follow-up is a creaking folk record so direct, you might wish he'd at least meandered a bit. Even amid the record’s sloppier moments, as on the ho-hum waiting game of ‘Prescriptions’, DeRose's voice bridges any creative divide. Where would 'The Woods' be without that chorus of multi-tracked harmonies which provide his setting with much-needed shadows? How convincing would ‘Hard Times’ be without DeRose’s timbre bloodletting everywhere? His intuition as a vocalist may salvage much of this material but it doesn’t distract from how off-the-cuff Shady Retreat can feel. The final moments of ‘Slow Down’ spotlight a breakdown so half-hearted that I’d swear he tried to adlib the last lyrics. In effect, the song splinters into straws. In these seldom moments, DeRose sounds like he’s coasting… and when his album is under half an hour, seldom is too often.

All expectations aside, let the blockbuster be damned! By no means is this album a letdown because DeRose didn't give us a dramatic showstopper, although some signs of ambition would've been comforting. Had Peasant locked onto the ramshackle appeal of 'Slow Down' or 'Well Alright', Shady Retreat would've at least earned a well-rounded identity as a 70s songwriter record that enunciates classic Neil Young dissonance. Or had he stuck with the tried-and-true polish of On The Ground, which slicks sporadically over ‘Pry’ or the rollicking ‘Thinking’, he could've met some held-over expectations and maintained the status quo. At its best, Shady Retreat provides different angles into DeRose’s songbird genius, via the pillowed punch of ‘Tough’ or ‘The End’. Like any retreat, Peasant’s latest will satiate what heals you but ultimately feels a little malnourished.

The End 7" Single - Peasant

The End 7"

Peasant
Paper Garden Records.

SCQ Rating: 78%

Looking back, one of my greatest regrets of 2008 is missing Peasant’s beautiful debut, On the Ground, which I finally discovered this past spring. That full-length was loaded with bittersweet acoustic odes that orbited young songwriter Damien Derose’s soulful voice and, had I heard it earlier, On the Ground would’ve featured prominently on my Top Twenty Albums of 2008. Well, would’ve, could’ve. At least I’m listening now… and right in time; with Derose’s follow-up, Shady Retreat, arriving early 2010, Paper Garden Records has dropped a taste of what’s to come in the form of The End 7” single.

Although the singer-songwriter guild is chocked full of acoustic strum-sters, ‘The End’ – from its first notes – is undoubtedly Peasant, an ownership that proves how instinctive and powerful of a mark his debut left. Here Derose’s strums are countered by minor-key finger-picking, creating a warm unrest that allows the Doylestown native to inquire “Are you alone tonight?”. Another standstill romance, maybe, but where Derose once sang about moving on with ‘Those Days’, he’s now caught up in another polarized relationship, one that hardly reflects the closure of its title. With little time to reflect, we’re tossed into ‘Thinking’, a piano-led stream-of-conscious which picks up the pace and hugs reasoning like that of someone on the defensive. Man, have I missed this guy…

After those teases of Shady Retreat, this 7” closes with a live rendition of ‘The End’ courtesy of Daytrotter. While its arrangement doesn’t differ much from the studio version (albeit being stripped down), hearing Derose’s vocals should remind listeners how genuinely he carries these songs… like chips on his shoulder, arrows to his heart. As with the late Elliott Smith, Derose arms his compositions with a sense of place and narrative to feed his constant yet understated drama. Available September 1st through Paper Garden Records, this is something worth getting excited about. Catch up on Peasant here or pre-order this 7” here.

On the Ground - Peasant

On the Ground

Peasant
Paper Garden Records.

SCQ Rating: 81%

A semi-recent Family Guy moment I caught a few weeks ago depicted dysfunctional father Peter Griffin illustrating how lame college boys have destroyed what it means to play an acoustic guitar. There Peter sat beneath a tree, shirt open and shoeless, singing about drinking through depression, missing a girl, and facing his stereo speakers out of his window… all in the hopes of impressing a female listening in. It’s funny because (A) the lyrics are generic to the point where parody doesn’t even need to improvise, (B) we could each name a few guys who penned near-identical songs of faux-anguish and (C) most of those guys were inspired by a few songwriters who managed to make a fortune doing the same thing.

So whether we’re targeting Dashboard Confessional, early Bright Eyes or, yes, Jack Johnson, you can understand why the singer-songwriter armed only with an acoustic guitar might give me a serious case of the shivers… not simply because it’s an overpopulated, homogenized heap of hearts on my sleeve but because everyone (including your friend) thinks they can pull it off. Meanwhile Damien DeRose, who writes under the moniker of Peasant, comes along and wastes no time proving he’s the real deal. His voice and lyrics are legitimately soulful, leaving no trace of popular Motown-imitation, no doubt that DeRose has fully experienced his own storytelling. From the relationship standstill apparent in ‘Not Your Saviour’ to the lost-letter march of ‘We’re Good’, there’s no question that these songs share a lived-in quality; written from the heart and painstakingly perfected. The best singer-songwriters are those who can manage full-length records without slipping – even briefly – into acoustic apathy and giving credit where it’s due, On the Ground delivers on every track. There’s that lone melancholic guitar line cascading over DeRose’s strumming at the tail-end of ‘Exposure’, some faint harmonica breezing through ‘The Wind’ and who could forget the morning-dulled guitar pulsating through ‘Stop For Her’; a song every guy wishes he wrote.

These folk songs remain fresh thanks to smart arrangements but what deems this debut so memorable is easily DeRose’s voice. An original hybrid that trades off between the vocal strengths of Bon Iver and Elliott Smith, this Doylestown, Pennsylvania native sings urban lullabys (‘Impeccable Manners’) and lovelorn farewells (‘Those Days’) with equal conviction, resulting in one of the year’s most promising debuts. The influence of the late Smith is particularly reoccurring, not due to any morose drama that permeates Elliott’s career but because On the Ground showcases the long-lost power of a man who can weave multiple narratives with little more than his acoustic guitar. That intimacy and comfort earned between songwriter and listener negates what strangers we really are, and like Smith, Peasant makes a fresh connection, succeeding where most troubadours (and college kids, for that matter) irreversibly fail.