PEEL - Unwind

PEEL

Unwind
self-released; 2015

3.2 out of 5

By Jamie Funk

PEEL is a one-man band who recently released Unwind. His music can be classified under the post-punk genre, which has the most similarities with a band like Joy Division but also has hints of garage rock.

I have to say there are some decent ideas, the singing is solid and the songs are fairly well written. The production and recording quality holds back the songs from finding their potential. There are a lot of missing essential frequencies which even on really nice speakers make it sound as if it's being played from a laptop. Some of those frequencies, which are present are higher which can make listening to the music at louder volumes a bit piercing. On top of that there are some timing issues, which adversely affect the impact of a song. 

The album opens with “Find the day” which has a low, dark energy. It’s one of the songs that suffers most from the aforementioned adverse production aspects. Despite that it’s still enjoyable but it could have used a defining chorus. “The Dancer” has a post-punk type bass line with guitar fills that are more reminiscent of something you would hear from the Rolling Stones. The song isn’t very dynamic despite some of the lead guitar and has relatively low energy that never feels like it takes off. 

There are some highlights on the album. The first one is “All signs are blank” although it’s about three dbs softer than the previous songs. There are no drums in this song, which was nice because there were no noticeable issues with timing. He does have a good voice and I noticed it when he sang, “lover flew away with a broken wing and something in her brain please police you here to save me not to leave me be oh people just walking by like a switch without a light.”

The next highlight was “indie rock - moody” where he has a nonchalant swagger to his voice that worked quite well. He has a bit of folk thing going on with this song. 

All things considered PEEL has some talent but is going to need to do some tweaking in the production. If he is going to continue going to go DIY he should work on figuring out how to have the music feel more in sync and use compression and EQ to give some more energy to the songs. Musically, there were some inspired moments and I felt the low hanging singer/songwriter vibe he had towards the end of the album was his best effort.

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