AEM071 Peasant

There’s a cer­tain kind of del­i­cate music that quickly divides lis­ten­ers into dis­tinct camps; we’re either enthralled by its ethe­real melodies or utterly bored by the appalling infre­quency of extended drum solos and full stacks of Mar­shall ampli­fiers. I hap­pen to love acoustic music for its sim­plic­ity, can­dor, and occa­sional bril­liance. But, I can see where the other guys are com­ing from and usu­ally refrain from forc­ing the lat­est Neil Hal­stead solo project or Suf­jan Stevens solo banjo tape on my friends and col­leagues that favor music with a bit more oomph. Only occa­sion­ally does an artist come along that so per­fectly tran­scends the frame­work of expec­ta­tions for acoustic music that I feel moved (com­pelled, actu­ally) to share his full cat­a­log with every­one I meet on the street, regard­less of their musi­cal incli­na­tions. This hap­pened with DIY savant Damien DeRose, known as Peas­ant.

I get the sense, lis­ten­ing to Peasant’s songs, that he’s expe­ri­enced life more com­pletely than I have, and that my best hope at redemp­tion is to absorb his music so thor­oughly that I vic­ar­i­ously ben­e­fit from the flood of emo­tional wis­dom that pours out from every word he sings. Then again, to say that Damien DeRose took “the road less trav­eled” in this life would be a gross under­state­ment. He began his edu­ca­tion at an exper­i­men­tal school that embraced a pro­foundly unortho­dox style of edu­ca­tion. He and his class­mates spent their days going for walks, tak­ing care of farm ani­mals, and fash­ion­ing their own pens from feather quills. For­tu­nately for us, this uncon­ven­tional cur­ricu­lum included enor­mous amounts of group singing, with a reper­toire that con­sisted pri­mar­ily of tra­di­tional folk songs (I knew I heard traces of that “high lone­some sound”). Dur­ing his ado­les­cent years DeRose com­piled an arse­nal of instru­ments, begin­ning with piano and vio­lin, then mov­ing to drums, gui­tar, bass, banjo, and har­mon­ica. He spent his high school years, like many bud­ding musi­cians of our fine gen­er­a­tion, play­ing Weezer cov­ers in shitty rock bands. Then, in what must have seemed like a crush­ing blow at the time, he was kicked out of school and cut loose to forge his own path. This unex­pected and unsought free­dom very likely served as the great­est pos­si­ble boon to his devel­op­ment as a song­writer. The period that fol­lowed was a rough one, wrought with what in ret­ro­spect might be con­strued as adven­ture. He moved to Cal­i­for­nia and bought a sail­boat with a friend, but the boat sunk (was sunk, actu­ally, by sea lions) before it ever saw open ocean. So he trav­eled around the US and Europe, col­lect­ing what­ever inspi­ra­tion the world had to offer. De Rose came out on the other side of this adven­ture sea­soned, but also very much affected by the daily grind of forg­ing one’s own exis­tence at an age when the major­ity of his peers were most con­cerned with what to wear at the next col­lege social–so much so that he gave him­self the hum­ble stage name Peas­ant. Hav­ing been on the receiv­ing end of too many $7/hr day jobs, bro­ken rela­tion­ships, and chance encoun­ters, Peas­ant bears the weight of the world on his shoul­ders, and his songs are per­fect cap­sules of emo­tion, con­tained and con­veyed by a musi­cal impulse that’s noth­ing short of brilliant.

When we spoke on the phone, Peas­ant said he writes “songs about feel­ings that pro­duce those feel­ings.” Songs to inspire love, to incite hatred, to send a con­fi­dent man to the depths of self-loathing and then draw him back again. This is one of the great­est accom­plish­ments of high art, and while many an artist might make this claim, Peas­ant undoubt­edly suc­ceeds. The songs on this 7-inch are both home-recording ven­tures, forged over many months in an attic in DeRose’s home town of Doyle­ston, PA. They’re recorded with the kind of com­pul­sive atten­tion that’s impos­si­ble in a for­mal record­ing stu­dio. Every sound is metic­u­lously cap­tured, adjusted, re-recorded, mixed, re-mixed, and scru­ti­nized. The soundscape’s lay­ered with­out being lush; the end result is both decid­edly unique and per­fectly suit­able to the dreamy melan­choly of Peasant’s music. I’m tempted to make com­par­isons to Elliot Smith and Brian Wil­son, but Peasant’s music isn’t so eas­ily reduced to the sum of its influences.

A-side “The Dis­tance” evokes the same world of aim­less­ness and iso­la­tion as Simon & Garfunkel’s “Amer­ica”. It’s the per­fect snap­shot of your long lost older brother, sit­ting alone on the back seat of a bus like a still frame from some unmade Wes Ander­son remake of Into The Wild. It’s about los­ing people–not to death or deprav­ity, but to the sim­ple dis­trac­tions and the nat­ural dis­per­sion of a nor­mal life. He sings,

“I’ve been walk­ing in the city and wan­der­ing far away.
I’ve been falling through the fields and hid­ing every day.
I’ve been hold­ing onto every­thing, all that I have.
I’m hop­ing I can come out the other side.
Been sleep­ing in the moon­light, and run­ning through the days.
Been wait­ing for the trou­bles to go away.

Where have you been my lover?
Where have you gone, my friends?
Fad­ing through the dis­tance of each other.
What have we done, my brother?
Have we all gone away?
I’m lis­ten­ing to the dis­tance of the past.”

A sim­ple two chord pro­gres­sion sends the song on a steady tra­jec­tory from the onset, each change pro­pelling lis­ten­ers one step fur­ther on some grad­u­ally unfold­ing jour­ney. Like DeRose said, it’s a song about dis­tance that induces the per­cep­tion of dis­tance in any­one within earshot. What a trick. The arrange­ment is com­plex but so del­i­cately bal­anced that it’s pos­si­ble to lis­ten through the song with­out fully hear­ing the dozens of over­dubbed parts that DeRose weaves through the basic frame­work of gui­tar and vocals. There are mul­ti­ple key­boards, lay­ered vocal har­monies, and even some fig­ures that sound a bit like back­wards tape loops (around 1:45). It all blends into a sonic stew, with DeRose’s voice in the fore­front as the most promi­nent ingre­di­ent. It’s del­i­cate but not frag­ile, sen­si­tive but not overly expres­sive. It’s earnest. This isn’t a song writ­ten by some­one so overly-conscious of song­writ­ing as to do any­thing to delib­er­ately sub­vert the tra­di­tion. That said, he isn’t merely fol­low­ing in tow either; it’s a refresh­ing mix­ture of truly orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion and deeply per­sonal expression.

A hol­low piano and relaxed snare usher in B-side “Well Alright,” another tune based on a repeated two chord pro­gres­sion. It doesn’t do much to start, but just as I’d nor­mally began to reach towards that skip but­ton, DeRose enters with the line, “You tell me that I look like I’m gone when I’m around” and the song launches into an anthem for dis­sat­is­fied cou­ples (if dis­sat­is­fied cou­ples even have anthems…I guess it’s like hav­ing “our song” but instead of nuz­zling you just sit in cold silence). Like on “The Dis­tance,” “Well Alright“‘s main hook is achieved by intro­duc­ing new har­monic move­ment to the mix in con­junc­tion with a higher vocal melody. To the extent that it’s a for­mula, it’s a for­mula for suc­cess. At one point DeRose sings, “I’m try­ing to find the answers in myself, I’m try­ing to find the rea­sons in my head, I don’t wanna drift away the days.” There’s a res­o­nance here with “The Dis­tance” in so much as Peas­ant is very clearly on a search. Though he’s set­tled down since his post-high school excur­sions, he’s embarked upon a new exploration–more mature per­haps, but more dif­fi­cult to com­plete. It’s the inevitable dichotomy between liv­ing a sta­tion­ary life while mak­ing cre­ative and intel­lec­tual progress, all the while sus­tain­ing those vital per­sonal con­nec­tions forged in the pre­ced­ing decades. It ain’t easy, but if the broader search for that per­fect bal­ance does indeed con­tinue for Damien DeRose, he can rest assured that he’s cre­ated some­thing spe­cial in the music pre­sented on this 7-inch. If you’re look­ing for more Peas­ant, his lat­est LP Shady Retreat is out March 2nd on Paper Gar­den Records.

Ben Heller

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