Alice Peacock — Minnesota (Sept. 20th, 2019)
• „Album naznačuje, že že navzdory „přemýšlení o tom, co všechno se ještě musí stát,“ skutečně dosáhla vyšší míry moudrosti.“
• She acknowledges how lucky she is to have a co~parent holding down the home front, her husband of 21 years. “We’re staying together for the math homework,” she insists. “It takes both of us to figure it out.” Like many couples with young children, she admits they don’t have much time alone together. They fall into bed exhausted. But she also relates: “We ran into each other recently. He was driving his car; I was driving mine. He pulls around and rolls down the window, and he somehow caught me off~guard. I just looked at him smiling at me and thought, ‘Did I really win this prize?’”
• That recognition recalls a line from “Your Own Backyard”: “Before your life goes slipping by you / Open up your eyes.”
• “Things feel very sacred to me at this time in my life,” Peacock confides. “You reach an age where you begin to lose people. The beautiful moments we have, like being out in nature up in Minnesota — ‘the moon waxing over the water, the loon calling to her lover’ — I keep telling myself, ‘Take it in because this is it.’” — JULIA RUBINER
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Album release: Sept. 20th, 2019
Recording Location:
• Planet Of The Tapes
• The Butcher Shoppe
Record Label: Peacock
Duration: 37:15
Tracks:
01 Love Goes With You 3:19
02 Dry Spell 3:49
03 Paranoid 4:30
04 Resting in the Quiet 4:26
05 Didn’t Have to Be So Good 3:35
06 Isn’t That Me and You 3:44
07 Free and Wild 3:56
08 Your Own Backyard 3:14
09 Minnesota 3:59
10 God Be Near Me 2:43
Written by:
• Alice Peacock 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10
• Wayne Kirkpatrick / Alice Peacock 2
• Alice Peacock / Jon Vezner 6
• Dirk Freymuth / Alice Peacock 8
Credits:
• Ben Woods Photography
• Derri Daugherty Mixing, Vocal Harmony, Vocals (Background)
• Taylor Deupree Design
• Richard Dodd Mastering
• Chris Donohue Bass, Bass (Upright)
• Kate Downey Cover Photo
• Dirk Freymuth Composer
• James Hollihan Gut String Guitar, Soloist
• Will Kimbrough Guitar (Electric), Slide Guitar
• Wayne Kirkpatrick Composer, Guitar (Acoustic)
• Phil Madeira Engineer, Guitar (El.), Lap Steel Guitar, Mellotron, Melodica, Producer, Slide Guitar, Vocals (Bckgr), Wurlitzer, Wurlitzer Piano
• Joseph Daniel Northcutt Back Cover Photo
• Bryan Owings Drums, Shaker
• John Painter Banjo, Guitar (12 String Acoustic), Guitar (Acoustic), Hi String Guitar, Horn
• Alice Peacock Composer, Guitar (Acoustic), Vocals, Vocals (Background)
• Sean Sullivan Engineer
• Jon Vezner Composer
• Phary Woods Illustrations
Review
Henry Carrigan. September 18, 2019
• The opening track on Alice Peacock’s Minnesota, “Love Goes with You,” is a harbinger of the subtle and simple beauty of the entire album. The song opens with Peacock’s and Derri Daugherty’s crystalline a cappella plea — “What does it mean when you say goodbye?” — before a snare shot opens into a shuffling, pop~inflected ballad laid down by shimmering vocals that create a cascading wall of sound. The song explores loving, leaving, and the fleeting nature of time and relationships.
• Peacock’s smooth vocals inhabit these tunes, and she delivers a stunning array of styles and vocal phrasings. John Painter supplies horns on the sultry jazz vamp “Paranoid,” while Phil Madeira lays down the foundation on his Wurlitzer and provides some toodling airs on his melodica. The haunting “Free and Wild” floats along ethereally like a lullaby; it’s comforting, and the gentle tune mimics the nurturing evoked by the lyrics. The singer sings her child to sleep in the song’s opening lines: “Go to sleep my baby child / Let your dreams run free and wild.” The mother embraces the beauty of her child’s freedom to be itself, and she looks back to the birth of the child and ahead to the child’s future while being grateful for her child’s presence: “And how can I imagine my life / Before you came and brought your light.” Will Kimbrough lays down some crunchy, rocking riffs in “My Own Backyard,” a propulsive rocker that counsels that the grass is not always greener on the other side. The album closes with a gorgeous, Latin~inflected anthem to Peacock’s home state, “Minnesota,” and a soulful gospel~inflected song, “God Be with Me,” that Madeira kicks off with a Sunday morning piano run and that Painter fills in with his horns.
• Minnesota, Peacock’s first studio album since 2009’s Love Remains, is stunningly beautiful, and that beauty arises from the simple structure of most of these songs; the uncluttered, spacious, and transcendent vocals; and Peacock’s ability to inhabit phrasing in these songs like a jazz singer. Minnesota is an entrancing album.
• https://www.nodepression.com/
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