It’s fitting that ‘Doppelgänger’, the first album from Brooklyn slowcore trio Peaer in seven years, finds the band exploring how our identity changes and our perspectives shift over time. Its nine songs are a reflection and reckoning with people’s mental projection of themselves versus who they are.
The album arrives after a period of upheaval. The pandemic put paid to their 2020 tour, the lull giving founder Peter Katz time to reflect on how he had grown resentful towards music and “retreated into solitude”. By the time touring restrictions eased, he had taken a full-time office job, forced to balance his new corporate role with life as a musician.
Not that Katz stopped writing songs. Indeed, the changing viewpoints reflected on the album reflect its long gestation. And, while the album captures Peaer’s math-rock roots, infused with complex, shifting time signatures, it’s arguably their most accessible work yet.
‘Doppelgänger’ kicks off with the instantly infectious 1960s garage band-flavoured indie-pop of End Of The World. Despite its breezy nature, the lyrics are shot through with paranoia, inspired by the time Katz thought he had been hacked and had his identity stolen.
That unsettled air spills into the music on Part Of The Problem which finds Katz sharing the evening commute amid people “worried sick” about the future. The band shift up a gear with a stinging guitar solo as Katz declares it time to strive for common solutions and throw off old mindsets.
Lead single Button finds Katz struggling in his new identity as an office worker. There is a moment of humility towards the end as he acknowledges that even if we don’t necessarily want to work, there is some power to be found in being a part of something larger than yourself.
Bad News skilfully combines the band’s influences, its brooding bassline inspired by Californian indie-rockers Pinback with a distorted Omar Rodriguez-Lopez style guitar solo, while sweeter moments in the chorus and outro provide gentle relief. While Katz worried the song – about his resentment towards music – came out as bitter, he hopes it also shows a resolve to turn away from darkness into a more self-confident future. It does.
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