peaches davenport - THANK YOU JOB SQUAD
(Self-Released 2014)
Though the album barely surpasses 22 minutes, Cole Wharton's debut effort under the pseudonym peaches davenport is an epic in its own right, an otherwordly work that claims possibly uncharted territory in the sphere of musical influence. There's certainly a cohesive aesthetic present throughout THANK YOU JOB SQUAD, it's just not one that's particularly classifiable. The album cover gives the listener a window into this reality. Wispy keyboards bookend the album, their tone a droney spin on the kitschy synths of an educational film meant to be shown in a physics classroom. They float lightly, but opaquely, they're dark clouds of ambient nothingness, reminding me of the Twin Peaks theme song, only more benign. There's no real sinister element to these pieces, composed solely of keyboard meditations and supplementary crackle. They just exist. They're atmospheric gases and the album inside is its own, weird little Edenic universe.
Though the album's instruments and elements of the songs themselves are pretty standard, I'm tempted to refer to THANK YOU JOB SQUAD as outsider art. There's meticulous, sometimes genius detail applied to the dizzying, offbeat energy that flows through the album. The arrangement of "Zounds! A Dog" is positively symphonic, the sort of care Kevin Barnes gives to each of his songs as of Montreal. Noise tracks like "Yoko" and "Ivan Hold Me" transition between the more accessible ones. The album is a surrealist dream that flows very well, but can be jarring in its obliqueness. The key to the album is "Dog Hair Sweatpants", a shambolic folk song that dances on a swaying rhythm, its brassy keyboards and breathy backing vocals making for a gorgeous and breezy tune that borders on bombast. If you respect the work of innovators like Dean Blunt and Sunset Rubdown, you'll fall head over heels for peaches davenport.
