Whilst Mumford & Sons and Fanfarlo have found great success over the past year with their grand multi-instrumental soundscapes and crescendos, Peggy Sue offer a more stripped down and more elemental approach to folk. I can hear the evolution of that disparate folk traditions from Celt to fairground, but Peggy Sue manage to founder something impressively coherent in this album of endings.
Watchmen will be the first single from the album and is a perfect example of Peggy Sue’s charm which stomps through the folk traditions with harmonies, march-esque drumming and twanging guitar. And a vibraslap. Then you’ve got “Matilda” which rolls into something all the more bluesy, with the vocals soaring above the developing layers of rimshots, guitar hooks. But in contrast to these two, it is unease and awkwardness that defines this album.
February Snow best encapsulates the themes of the album, and is filled with the panic of the last throws of a relationship as you desperately search ad scrape for what you once had before it disappears and is washed over with the erosion of time. It’s hectic, lurching and uneasy and yet curiously appealing to those on the outside looking in.
Nevertheless, not all is so awkward, and my favourites “The Shape We Made” and “Lovergone” close the album on a more uplifting note.They are simple, elegant and wrench at your heartstrings, but at the same time soothing to the soul.
Peggy Sue have released a free cassette/compilation for fans to wet your appetite. We’ve got most of the tracks here, but you can download/stream the whole thing on SoundCloud
Peggy Sue – New Song
Peggy Sue – Hadlock Padlock
Peggy Sue – Horror Movie Marathon
Peggy Sue – Pupils Blink
Peggy Sue – Clockwork
Peggy Sue – The Conservationist
Peggy Sue – Hatstand Blues
Peggy Sue – Lazarus
Pre-order Fossils and Other Phantoms @ Rough Trade | Banquet | Amazon
Stream the whole album now @ Clash Music