Vices. Sometimes they can feel so good, but you know they’re usually wrong. That’s pretty much how Katy Young and Rosa Slade had grown to feel about some of the music they were making as Peggy Sue.
Which is why, following the release of 2014’s Choir of Echoes, they took a little time out. They used it to figure out why they’d started making music in the first place, and when they were ready to come back, they returned to doing things the way they had at the very beginning.
They started writing in their living rooms again, with no more worrying about prescribed timelines and studio schedules, letting the musically develop more organically. The results are found in these 10 songs, deceivingly simple tales of love and loss set to classic pop structures from the heady days of the 50s and 60s.
The back-to-basics approach might make you think this record had been put together in some lo-fi fashion, but together with returning producer Jimmy Robertson, Peggy Sue have crafted a very distinctive sound, backing up the sugary doo-wop and surf with rich reverb and a thin underlayer of fuzz, rewarding repeated listening. What sounds so carefree and easy on the surface is actually a delicate tapestry.
The mood is uplifting, the pop sensibilities infectious. Having remembered what first brought them into this game, Peggy Sue sound like they’re having real fun again.