Jetty 2020
Acidic New Yorker strikes a chord with zeitgeist yet falls short of reaching gestalt.
Despite releasing immediately likeable albums for decade now – and even scoring a rock musical, “Bulldozer” – Peter Galperin did not appeared on public radar on the scale his talent deserves. Maybe it’s because this artist’s oeuvre has dealt for the most part with affairs of the heart rather than spirit of times he hinted at at the beginning of it all. Still, given the current state of other affairs, Galperin couldn’t stand aside anymore, so “Tomorrow Seems Like Yesterday” tunes into what’s going on outside and inside of a thinking American at the moment and taps into one’s psyche with tasty insistence.
Thriving on lyrical and sonic controversy from the record’s start, Peter chose to preface his president-slagging diatribe “Nature Of Your Kind” with glorious brass before a frivolous whistle and countrified strum infuse the cut to help the deliberately strident vocals ram the message home. After that, anger subsides and satire kicks in, which is why, while it’s easy to assign such drier numbers as “As Good As It Gets” or “Digital Friend” to a singer-songwriter category, the organ-oiled backdrop and catchy chorus lend the self-encouraging “Never Too Young” a pop-rock brilliance.
Yet this isn’t why the deliberate ignorance of “Don’t Need To Know” seems innocent and charming: this is because the piece’s folksy confession offers reasonable, relatable limits of one’s reach – intellectual and physical – without throwing optimism out the window. That’s where the communal delight of “Another Drink” will be found, roping in friends for chorus, and if “Won’t Let Go” doesn’t go for jugular, its electric charge feels so sweet and its harmonica-heated roll feels so good. As a result, this short album’s gamut turns out to be broader than many a longplay’s, and here’s a chance many a music aficionado should notice Galperin’s signal on their radars soon enough.
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