ALLRED & BRODERICK
Find The Ways
By Nicolas Jolly-Chatenier
Contributor
The prolific folk musician Peter Broderick is back this year with an album
recorded with his friend and partner David Allred, called Find the Ways
via-Erased Tapes.
And to find this ways, he had to give up a large amount of instruments and concentrate on the minimum : a violin, an upright bass, and their voices.
Like a wish of focusing back on the meaning of life, far away from the agitation
and the noises of our actual world, the two musicians have confined themselves
in Broderick’s studio on the Oregon’s coasts, where Peter is from.
There, they had the opportunity to explore both the simplicity and the complexity
of the sounds their instruments and voices allow us to do.
And the result is incredibly hard and easy to understand, listening to this LP.
Like nature, like life, all in all.
The first song, « Living on a Wire », is a perfect way to enter into this project.
Like two troubadours, Allred and Broderick invite us in a perfect duet to
follow them.
But the adventure really begins with « The Wise One », like a trip through an
ocean -or through oneself- to find wise and answers.
Then arrives the first instrumental song of the album, « Two Otters », written by Broderick when he was only 17. Largely inspired by the menuets he was playing
at this age, this piece is a perfect mix between baroque music and folk melody.
« Hey Stranger », drops us in a more actual and sad atmosphere. As the melody and the singing are getting closer to indie and folk, the lyrics written by Allred for a missing friend, are aiming straight at the heart. Maybe the climax of the album.
As a conclusion of the first side, the instrumental « Four Aspens » leads us to a very dark and sad feeling, between beauty, despair and melancholy.
Hopefully, « The Ways », with only voices, arrives like two arms wide open, with
a simple and wise message to help each other. A message apparently a little bit soapy but finally very poetic in this minimalistic version.
« Hesitation » is a new step to the sun, following « The Ways » in the rise from the end of the first side.
« I’m Not Crazy » finalizes the bridge Broderick and Allred had built with this album between indie- folk and baroque music : on a classical strings piece, the two musicians are talking about
difference and acceptation by others, theme frequently broached by folk music.
If the whole album is haunted by huge and empty spaces, « Ode to Angelica » seems to be its most contemplative moment : the wide on your face and the noise of the ocean are the only things missing to be perfectly at the edge of a cliff in Ireland.
The album ends with the very funny and ironic « Robert, Please », which is about Broderick’s wish to change his music.
And also the key to understand where this radical change in Broderick’s
music comes from.
At the end of Find the Ways, we can say that Broderick and Allred’s goal is achieved : they took us for a few minutes out of time, out of space, where everything seems to be longer and softer, without being boring.
A perfect album to introspect and, to reuse one of the song, to find
« The wise one ».
Live dates:
17 May: Athens, GR - Saint Paul’s Anglican Church
18 May: Athens, GR - Saint Paul’s Anglican Church
19 May: Cappadocia, TR - Cappodox Festival at Guray Museum
28 May: Amsterdam - Zonnehuis
29 May: Middelburg, NL - De Spot
09 June: Rome, IT - Blackmarket
10 June: Bassano Del Grappa, IT - Piazza di Brenta
11 June: Galzignano, IT - Anfiteatro del Venda
Find the Ways track list
1 - Living on a Wire
2 - The Wise One
3 - Two Otters
4 - Hey Stranger
5 - Four Aspens
6 - The Ways
7 - Hesitation
8 - I’m Not Crazy
9 - Ode to Angelica
10 - Robert, please
B I Z Z A R R E
