Peter & Kerry – Clothes, Friends & Photos EP

• 4th Apr 2011

Thankfully this isn’t the long-awaited Andre-Atomic Kitten super group, but rather a little folk-electronica (that’s probably where you’d put it) collective from the independent Tape Club Records. The group consists of Colchester’s finest, Kerry Leatham, and Peter Lyons of Southampton, who has been called ‘burgeoning’ in the press releases connected with the band, which strikes me as a funny word to use, but fair does. In the rumour mill I hear that the label occasionally they still release albums on tape. Releasing this band on tape would be fitting in a way, if you are going for a twee back to basics style. I’m half surprised they didn’t release the album on a big lovely Victoria sponge with speakers on it really.

So the band generally has a geeky pop-folk style, more ‘Mastermind’ than ‘Masters of War’, with Kerry getting the ol’ acoustic guitar out whilst Peter fiddles round with the PC. There style emulates bands who have been leading a folky revolution recently, the sort of Laura Marling-Mumford and Sons meeting more of a homespun style of folk, and then injects a little twist with the electro drums and Casio samples. At times sweet towards saccharine, but for the most part the EP feels atmospheric and sorrowful. After a bit though you start feeling like they should stop whinging and do something constructive rather than moaning about texting and such like.

The out-of-the-blue texting remark is in reference to Knees, definitely the best and most individual track on the EP. There is a strange line which offers that ‘Maybe sending just one x is my goodbye for life text’, a homage to the interminable wrangling of texting kisses politics, however it seems a weird one, as I have always believed the one x offers decidedly more promise than a goodbye for life, but maybe that’s just me. The song itself has a charged semi-epic production, with solemn slow piano and the unclipped voice of Peter, with a nice bit of rewound guitars that adds some Radiohead-like sound to it. Similarly, with the drums, the out-of sync odd smattering of drums evokes a production of Animal Collective-esque style that is popular among the indie set but hasn’t yet reared its head in folk scene. This song is a keeper, though it may make you get into the shower fully clothed in the foetal position. It is sort of sad.

For the rest of the album, Clothes, Friends and Photos has a quicker tempo than the last, with a nice reference to Hughes-Plath, which sets the emotional range of the album. This song feels a bit overproduced, with distorted guitars pumped over the top of the verse that sound like a distant pneumatic drill heard from inside a bus. There is a nice bit of tambourine though, and everyone loves tambourine. Kerry shows her vocal range in the soulful Half Empty, with a bit of understated old DOS computer sounds in the background, though this one feels like you’ve heard it before somewhere. If you’ve heard Lulu and the Lampshades, who are getting a bit popular in some circles now, it is a bit like that, but more depressing. Oh, No is a nice little song that draws influence from Fleet Foxes’ big sound, The Shadows is not the best on the album, with a nice bit o’ banjo, syncopated 80s beats and an annoying echoed production, and the very poppy Crash and Burn starts with a irritating sample from, I think, the 1997 Casio keyboard that I learnt Twinkle Twinkle on, but spent most of the time messing round on the DJ setting. This song sounds like a moody album track from one of the London-affected accents of Kate Nash and Lily Allen.