Peabody
Prospero
10 Track, LP (2008, Nonzero Records)
Related: Peabody.
Like most of the music I purport to appreciate, my first encounter with Peabody came well into the band’s career. On a whim, we had wandered downstairs to the Public Bar at the Esplanade Hotel and witnessed Peabody serving up a barrage of jagged guitars and contracted psychedelic explosions that left an indelible mark on our inebriated rock’n’roll brains. Subsequent live encounters were just as impressive, and we wondered how this band had fallen through the cracks of our direct experience.
So with that relatively recent, but demonstrably impressive inspection in mind, Peabody’s new album, Prospero, is – relatively speaking – a cut below the full-frontal live dimension. There’s no doubting the sincerity of Peabody’s exploration of sharply cut sonic territory and its indulgence of quality historical moments – ‘Big Sur’ nods vaguely to the Beasts of Bourbon’s ‘The Low Road’, while the ‘Devil for Sympathy’ seems keen to rustle up the memory of Nirvana’s ‘Come As You Are’ – yet this is still a band that finds its true colours in the potentially unhinged moments of live performance.
It’s in that environment that a song like ‘Buzzard vs Ibis’ can escape the confines of the three-minute song and become the ranting neo-post punk meander it yearns to be. Where ‘Where Are You Coming From’ can reach out and put its well-groomed arm around your shoulders and drag you along for a walk through its collection of Church records, or where ‘The Only Way I Know’ can blow up in your face like amateur engineered homemade SST explosives.
Then again, the recorded incarnation allows a more considered appreciation of the artistic influences on Prospero – notably, Peter Greenaway, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Kerouac and Egon Schiele. That aside, Prospero spends much of its time screaming out for a festering live environment in which to evolve. Here’s waiting for the next opportunity.
by Patrick Emery
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