AEM107 Francois Peglau

“I may have 3 pass­ports, all fake” jokes Fran­cois Peglau, “but I con­sider myself first of all Peru­vian. That is where my roots are. But don’t tell that to the French embassy!” The ques­tion “where are you from” has got to be a dif­fi­cult one for Peglau, a self described “Peruvian/French/Argentinean” artist who cur­rently resides in Lon­don.  He grew up in Peru and achieved mod­er­ate fame through­out Latin Amer­ica as vocal­ist and gui­tarist in Lima-based indie-rock quar­tet  Los Fuck­ing Som­breros, arguably the best band name ever.  Upon mov­ing to Lon­don three years ago, Peglau decided to start up a solo project.  He began writ­ing in Eng­lish as an “exer­cise” to help him­self adapt to his new envi­ron­ment.  But like the man him­self, Peglau’s music is worldly, tran­scend­ing inter­na­tional bor­ders and draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from all of the many places he’s called home.  Cit­ing influ­ences that range from Elliot Smith to the polit­i­cally charged folk songs of Cuban artist Sil­vio Rodreguez, Peglau brings refresh­ing per­spec­tive to the scene.

A-side “One Minute to Mid­night Dream (So Sad)” would sound a lit­tle like the Bea­t­les if you stripped away the disco drums and bass that makes it so damn groovy.  You might also have to can the syn­co­pated gui­tar strokes and lo-fi vocals, which bring to mind the clas­sic reg­gae record­ings of Horace Andy.   But I promise you, there’s a healthy dose of clas­sic British pop-rock’n’roll buried in there some­where, most notice­ably in the melodic hook that beings, “while I was wait­ing,” and cul­mi­nates in the refrain, “so sad,” at which point the dance party takes over again.  The lyrics, along with most of the lyrics of Peglau’s self-titled album, are charm­ingly self-deprecating.  He describes them with a cri­tique: “I’m always bitch­ing about the sys­tem but at the end I always play by the rules.” The pro­duc­tion value is so spot on that it’s hard to believe Peglau recorded and pro­duced it in his bed­room, play­ing nearly all the instru­ments (gui­tar, bass, ukelele, key­board, drums, elec­tron­ics) him­self.  He did receive a lit­tle help from Lucia Vivanco on vio­lin, how­ever, who’s sub­limely catchy riff accen­tu­ates the groove.  As you can see, there are a lot of pieces com­ing together in Peglau’s music.

B-side “I’ll Never Be Alain Delon” pays homage to the film star that Peglau regrets he’ll never become.  It’s more than a whim­si­cal fan­tasy, how­ever, and he addresses a world in which bro­ken dreams are the norm. Maybe that sounds a bit over the top but I pose the ques­tion, who wouldn’t like to be Alain Delon?  This guy was the French James Dean, only he lived long enough to rel­ish in the spot­light and enjoy flings with super­mod­els across the Euro­pean con­ti­nent.  “Peo­ple tell us the future is ours to change but I can’t change it,” Peglau sings, “and nei­ther you nor your friends.” The ques­tion that Peglau seems to be get­ting at is whether we’re mas­ters of our own des­tinies or whether our lives are pre­de­ter­mined.  Heavy stuff, but it’s masked behind a groove so fat and a vocal melody so catchy that you might not notice on the first lis­ten.  It’s a com­mon trait in Peglau’s songs, which rarely let seri­ous sub­ject mat­ter get in the way of a good time.  The cho­rus hits hard with a clas­sic rock chord pro­gres­sion and crunchy gui­tars.  The sec­ond verse is backed by an absolutely infec­tious syn­the­sizer hook, while the sam­ples from a Delon inter­view, in which he explains the role he so often played—le soli­taire, the mys­te­ri­ous and dash­ingly hand­some loner—spice things up later on.

While Peglau has lived in Lon­don for sev­eral years now, to say that he’s set­tled down would be a bit decep­tive.  He gigged recently in Mex­ico City and Lima in addi­tion to Lon­don and a trip to Buenos Aires is already in the works for the com­ing year.  I find that to be one of the most intrigu­ing things about him.  While pop stars can tour inter­na­tion­ally and let their record labels foot the bill, watch­ing the world go by from the com­fort­able van­tage point of a pri­vate jet, the inde­pen­dent musician’s tour is typ­i­cally con­strained by the price of gaso­line and the amount of time it takes the van to break down.  Peglau evades this prob­lem by play­ing with a dif­fer­ent band in every city he tours.  “This is a good way of solv­ing one of the biggest prob­lems when you tour, trans­porta­tion costs,” he explains.  “And it’s a great way of mak­ing friends. It’s a lit­tle bit stress­ful to rehearse in 3 days the whole reper­toire but until now it has worked.” But it’s more than bud­get that con­strains the major­ity of indie acts to a sin­gle coun­try and quite often, a sin­gle city.  These are typ­i­cally bands that build grass­roots fol­low­ings through con­sis­tent gig­ging in a con­cen­trated area.  And, well, it’s pretty fuck­ing dif­fi­cult to do that if you’re spread between con­ti­nents.  How many times have you seen a out of town band that’s hot shit in its home city play­ing for a crowd of 5 or 6 on their first out of state tour?  It’s not that these bands aren’t hot shit, they’ve sim­ply yet to achieve a geo­graph­i­cally diverse fol­low­ing.  So how does Peglau do it?  Part of the answer may lie in the fact that his shit is absolutely steam­ing but part of it lies in his cre­ative use of mul­ti­me­dia and online distribution.

Peglau has recently begun cre­at­ing low bud­get but highly enter­tain­ing videos to accom­pany his music.  “The idea is to work in a sin­gle for­mat, with a video for every song,” he explains.  “We try not to be pre­ten­tious and just have fun. And we always get some help from friends. It is just a labor of love.…” The love is pretty evident–just check out the videos for “One Minute to Mid­night Dream (So Sad)” and “I’ll Never Be Alain Delon” and you’ll see what I mean.  The for­mer begins with a shot of Peglau tak­ing a com­i­cally over­sized pill from a bot­tle marked “Sweet Dreams?” Hal­lu­ci­na­tions and dance sequences ensue.  The lat­ter is a mock trailer shot in black and white to evoke Delon’s clas­sic films.  It’s chocked full of all the scenes that make a good trailer—the kisses, the slaps, the gunshots—exaggerated to hilar­i­ous extents.  These videos are pro­duced and directed the help of wife Maria Elena de Losada who inci­den­tally sings back­ground on sev­eral of Peglau’s songs and whom, for rea­sons ratio­nal or not, I imag­ine look­ing like Pene­lope Cruz’s char­ac­ter of the same name in Vicky Christina Barcelona.   They share a charm­ing home-video aes­thetic but when it comes down to it, they’re a lot bet­ter than any home video I’ve seen recently, resem­bling more closely the work of a pro­fes­sional try­ing (and suc­ceed­ing) to be cute than the work of an actual amateur.

All of Peglau’s videos are avail­able on youtube.com and he’s made his entire album avail­able at bandcamp.com for free.  In addi­tion to the above men­tioned sites, he’s relied heav­ily on blogs to dis­sem­i­nate his music through­out the world.  It seems Peglau has learned bet­ter than just about any other musi­cian out there how to uti­lize the inter­net.  Through his inno­v­a­tive and decid­edly non-commercial approach he’s made his music avail­able to all, and that could be a big part of the rea­son he can fill clubs in all cor­ners of the world.   He isn’t just mak­ing great music—he’s pio­neer­ing a new path to becom­ing an inter­na­tion­ally suc­cess­ful musi­cian.  I sup­sect that in the decades to come we’ll see a lot more artists fol­low­ing this path. Peglau’s just a bit ahead of the times.  With this review I hope to intro­duce him to a pri­mar­ily Amer­i­can audi­ence.  Let’s just hope the French embassy isn’t read­ing.  We wouldn’t want to have one of those pass­ports revoked…

Nate Green­berg

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