{"id":21751,"date":"2021-10-07T05:30:55","date_gmt":"2021-10-07T09:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=21751"},"modified":"2021-10-08T12:37:26","modified_gmt":"2021-10-08T16:37:26","slug":"album-review-the-orange-peels-celebrate-the-moments-of-your-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/10\/07\/album-review-the-orange-peels-celebrate-the-moments-of-your-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: The Orange Peels — Celebrate the Moments of Your Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>One never quite knows what to expect from The Orange Peels<\/a>, and within that uncertainty lies a part of the group\u2019s charm. They certainly don\u2019t fit neatly into any particular musical subcategory, be it power pop, art rock or anything else, but hints of those styles make themselves known within the context of individual songs. Allen Clapp, Jill Pries and Gabriel Coan make intelligent music that\u2019s possessed of immediate appeal \u2013 that\u2019s the pop part of their collective sensibility \u2013 but The Orange Peels create music with depth, music that reveals itself fully only through repeated, close listens.<\/p>\n

And they subvert expectations at every turn. Who other than they would open an album with a cut like \u201c2X2,\u201d a track that \u2013 if it\u2019s redolent of anything else \u2013 might remind listeners of the kind of post-false-ending coda that characterized late-\u201960s psychedelia. The squalling lead guitar, the alluringly lumbering, lysergically-inclined drumming, the droning vibe. The track sounds like the kind of thing Robyn Hitchcock might have done in his Egyptian period. But the vocal harmonies add a Mamas and The Papas feel to the song; one can almost see the colorful kaftans and smell the sandalwood incense. And when the guitar solo shows up, it may conjure a mental picture of Steve Hillage covering George Harrison\u2019s \u201cIt\u2019s All Too Much.\u201d<\/p>\n

And after all that, we\u2019re only three minutes into Celebrate the Moments of Your Life<\/i>. Now, why on Earth this group \u2013 formerly based in Northern California but since relocated to the U.S. Virgin Islands \u2013 would take an album name from the tag line of an advertising jingle for flavored instant coffee? This I cannot answer. But playful, off-kilter humor has always been part of the complex blend that is The Orange Peels.<\/p>\n

The shimmering keyboard textures of \u201cGive My Regards to Rufus\u201d suggest the crystalline productions of Paddy McAloon\u2019s Prefab Sprout circa Two Wheels Good<\/i> (or Steve McQueen<\/i> if you\u2019re British). I also hear hints of Shelleyan Orphan\u2019s work around the time of 1989\u2019s Century Flower<\/i>. The hypnotic, keening strings create an ethereal urgency (pardon the oxymoron), if such a thing is even possible.<\/p>\n

Skittering electronic drum beats, faraway and sustained guitar and friendly harmonies all add up to the wonderfully idiosyncratic \u201cBirds Are Louder.\u201d Building on an avian theme, \u201cLarkitecture\u201d is an exercise in strangeness, with an unexpectedly mechanical vibe that makes me think of Suzanne Vega\u2019s gutsy and experimental 99.9F\u00b0<\/i>. The mix \u2013 full of throbbing bass and clattering percussion \u2013 feels like it\u2019s informed equally by Tears for Fears\u2019 The Seeds of Love<\/i>, David Bowie\u2019s Aladdin Sane<\/i> and Flaming Lips\u2019 The Soft Bulletin<\/i>. Yet \u2013 and this is key \u2013 The Orange Peels don\u2019t lose themselves in the process; the assimilate their influences and create something that sounds like them and no one else.<\/p>\n

\u201cLittle White Bird\u201d has shades of Burt Bacharach and Paul Williams, with a hint of Leonard Cohen and Bill Pritchard. And with that, you\u2019ve experienced but one of the four sides of what in vinyl form would surely be a double LP. (Note: apparently there is a vinyl version!)<\/p>\n

Recorded in California (before the move) and Philadelphia, the album is more the product of the trio of Clapp, Pries and Coan than past Orange Peels albums; there have been times \u2013 as in the 2020<\/i> period \u2013 when they were more or less a group. But the artistic and creative vision is the thread that connects all of their work. Guest spots are always employed to add something special, be it the string section of \u201cGive My Regards to Rufus\u201d and \u201cSolanium\u201d or the otherworldly guitar samples on \u201cLarkitekture.\u201d<\/p>\n

The impressionistic \u201cTwo Shores\u201d makes the point that even without vocals and lyrics, The Orange Peels are capable of painting evocative aural landscapes. \u201cHuman\u201d \u2013 a tune worthy of The Church\u2019s peak period \u2013 demonstrates their facility for creating hooky and memorable pop songs. \u201cMindego Hill\u201d is a tasty slice of mid-\u201960-styled popsike. \u201cMagical Thinking\u201d provides the closest thing to a straight continuation of the sonics and arrangements of (here I go mentioning it again) 2020<\/i><\/a>. \u201cFrom the Rosemary to the Rose\u201d is so lush and expansive it all but begs to be heard though headphones.<\/p>\n

Any double album worth its grooves ought to have an ambitious, three-part suite, right? If you agree, you\u2019re in luck: Side Four of the album features \u201cFrom the Sunflower to the Nightshade,\u201d ten-plus minutes of wonder. The first part, subtitled \u201cHelianthus,\u201d is instrumental. The second part, \u201cEvery Garden Grows\u201d is a lovely, waltzing construction with countless keyboards, each finding its perfect place in the mix among Clapp\u2019s stacked vocals. The too-brief guitar solo is reminiscent of Robert Fripp\u2019s work with Brian Eno. The third part of the suite, \u201cSolanium\u201d combines early analog synth textures with sophisticated chamber instrumentation into a meditative and melancholy piece.<\/p>\n

Having achieved that, some artists would have contented themselves with ending their double-opus right then and there. But The Orange Peels never take the obvious route. Instead, Celebrate the Moments of Your Life <\/i>concludes with another long piece, the more conventionally-structured \u201cPastels.\u201d It\u2019s seven-plus minutes of impossibly tuneful art-pop, a textbook example of combining pop values and arty ambition. Some of the sonic choices in the track might lead one to \u2013 momentarily– think of the term shoegaze<\/i>, but somehow that doesn\u2019t quite work here. Instead let\u2019s call it skygaze<\/i>. Yeah, that works.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve observed many times before, some bands build a career out of making a good (maybe even great) album and then making it again and again and again. There\u2019s a kind of wisdom in creating that kind of consistency. But it doesn\u2019t take chances. Taking chances \u2013 doing something different each go- round \u2013 is a trickier and riskier approach, because one runs the chance of (at worst) alienating the audience who dug the earlier stuff or (at best) failing to inspire and\/or engage those listeners who wanted, well, more of the same.<\/p>\n

By now you can guess which path I believe the Orange Peels have chosen. And from my perspective, that means that while they\u2019ve never failed to deliver an interesting and creative release, some of their output hasn\u2019t captured my imagination to the degree than 2020<\/i> did; released some 11 years ago, that album remains near the top of my list of great releases. And while it\u2019s pointless, really, to compare albums in the which-is-better sense \u2013 hey, just enjoy them all \u2013 with Celebrate the Moments of Your Life<\/i>, The Orange Peels have made an album that deserves mention in the same breath as their 2010 release.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m not the only one who thinks so. \u201c2020<\/i> (album no. 4) was us realizing everything we\u2019d explored on our first three albums,\u201d Allen Clapp wrote in a note to me. \u201cAnd the new one (album no. 8) is us doing the same thing, only with greater hindsight. If 2020<\/i> was like us graduating from high school, Celebrate the Moments of Your Life<\/i> is like us graduating college.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a maturity, a sense of having experienced more of life, along with the dents and dings that come with it \u2013 in these songs. But the indefatigable sense of wonder, the sense that a recording studio is a place to bring forth the magic, pervades the record. Celebrate<\/em> is the kind of record one doesn\u2019t simply listen<\/i> to; it\u2019s designed to be experienced. And after a decade-plus of raving about 2020<\/em> to most anyone who\u2019d listen, I must say that with their latest record, The Orange Peels have \u2013 for at least the second time \u2013 created the best album of their career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One never quite knows what to expect from The Orange Peels, and within that uncertainty lies a part of the group\u2019s charm. They certainly don\u2019t fit neatly into any particular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21752,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,51,65],"tags":[4656],"class_list":["post-21751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-pop","category-review","tag-the-orange-peels","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21751"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21835,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21751\/revisions\/21835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}