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PETER BLACK - The Paintings On The Wall Say Gambler! Gambler!
RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 1ST 2014If there is any justice in this world, the third full-length studio album by Sydney's Peter Black, The Paintings On The Wall Say Gambler! Gambler!, will propel this dedicated artist into the mainstream consciousness with such force that the general public will stop watching The Kardashians so they can listen to this album. Over and over again.
The Paintings is a flaming solid ball of creative explosion, whereby storm-trooping guitars and rhythm of Peter Black's side-projects The Hard-Ons and Nunchukka Superfly are overall forsaken in favour of various water colours, pastels and oil paintings of beautiful, introspective and may I say, whimsical melodies, that showcase a great understanding of what it means to be an ambitious yet utterly self-aware and self-assured song-writer and performer.
Witness God Is On My Side: Children's intimate voices and delicate acoustic guitar give way to lush orchestration and a whole world of beauty in melody is explored within a mere two minutes.
Witness These Aren't Doves Of Peace: A brilliantly hook-laden melody positively floats along until a mesmerising drum-keyboard interplay takes the song out through the left-hand door. Pulsating. Exciting. Utterly absorbing. And over in a little over three minutes.
Perhaps the most gobsmackingly brilliant track here is the three minute instrumental opus The Corridor Song. Spooky enough to fling the eyeball off one of the Residents; it is a soundtrack to a sleep-deprived taxi driver's walk up an unfamiliar apartment hallway to collect a passenger with a twisted and creepy Eastern European accent.
Does this sound like the creative output of an underpaid taxi driver? You bet. Peel away the layers and layers of musical textures here and witness at the core, an utterly driven misfit ... an unusual non-conformist with three bucks in his pocket and a million volts of ideas in his heart. That is right. The meter is ticking. Peter Black will not wait for the mainstream to catch up with him. Out comes album number three. Already.
Beautiful, haunting and often surreal, The Paintings has all these qualities and the utterly unique ability to combine the complex and simple within the same melody, the ability to mix lush with the sparse. Peter Black - a one-in-a-million performer and songwriter with his three-in-a-million album.
Stephen Ahn (The Condell Park Daily)
Tracklisting (39:17 m:s)
- These Aren't Doves Of Peace (3:24 m:s)
- The Spire Is Broken (2:49 m:s)
- Balls Of Ya Feet (1:39 m:s)
- Observer And Observed (2:53 m:s)
- Red Is Red (2:33 m:s)
- Glue (1:58 m:s)
- God Is On My Side (1:58 m:s)
- Tear It In Half (4:14 m:s)
- Butterflies As Big As Birds (2:12 m:s)
- Blood Soaked Sidewalk (2:30 m:s)
- The Corridor Song (2:59 m:s)
- Water Pistols (2:40 m:s)
- Silly Thing (1:44 m:s)
- Like An Old Movie (3:17 m:s)
- The Cover Of A Blue Oyster Cult LP (2:34 m:s)