PETER BRODERICK – HOW THEY ARE
Like a musical mutation of Will Oldham and Art Garfunkel, Peter Broderick sings his odd folk ballads with a subliminal intensity. Touted as a multi-instrumental genius, here his barenaked lyrics and fragile tenor are splayed across 8 beautiful vignettes, led almost entirely by a muted piano, or here and there a guitar. The arresting Sideline sees Broderick muse on the fallacies of being a bystander in times of adversity; the first 2 minutes of the song are presented in staggering a capella, and it really gets under your skin. Most of these pieces don’t rely on a catchy lyric or hooky melody; rather, Broderick spends his time settling the instrument into an emotional groove, letting the piano or guitar fold into a hypnotic canon before the lyrics arrive. It’s hard to feel anything but sad as most of these songs seem to stem from some sort of regret or longing; he wraps up this idea in the musical fable Guilt’s Tune, a late-night bedtime story for the misguided. This is all beautiful, disturbing stuff, the gentle kind of genius that stays with you for days.
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