“These songs are about reflection and reckoning with your mental projection of yourself vs. who you literally are.” That’s Peaer founder and frontman Peter Katz’s justification for the album title, and, to paraphrase Annie Lennox, who are we to disagree? Katz hasn’t quite travelled the seven seas, but he has departed the Connecticut punk scene and set up a band in Brooklyn known for ‘math-rock breakdowns’ and ‘murky psychedelia’. Doppelgänger is Peaer’s follow-up to A Healthy Earth, which was released way back in 2019.
Album opener and single ‘End of the World’ was inspired by an email that scared Katz into believing all his data would be stolen unless he paid a bitcoin ransom. “Am I truly safe? Am I really awake? / I’ll let the algorithm analyze my face / And maybe I’ll make first place / In this Sisyphean race.” Who knew that spam could prompt such an existential crisis? It’s bleak material, yet the song sounds as jolly as The Housemartins, and a Weezer-like crunch is added to glistening guitars.
On ‘Part of the Problem’, which has the slacker vibe of Vancouverites Peach Pit, Katz is a well-mannered parasite: “I’m a flea, I’m a tick / I’ll suck your blood / Make you sick… I’ll pay the bill / I’ll take the cheque / In the tradition of respect.” ‘Just Because’ was the band’s first release in five years last November and can be pithily described as an even more sinister ‘Knives Out’. The first half of ‘No More Today’ is plaintive, on-the-porch guitar, then the rest of the band are invited in, and Katz ends up wailing “no more f***ing” No more sex!” Who knew that being in your 30s meant membership of the monastery? Rose in My Teeth’ also begins quietly before becoming very loud indeed. Katz’s soft vocals over a prowling backdrop give way to an …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead-like wig out.
On latest single ‘Button’, Katz sings with the solemnity of Sisyphus himself: “Button my shirt, time to pretend I’m a normal human being / Counting up my digits, hope that none of them have gone missing.” The track includes keep-us-guessing rhythmical changes and demented piano, and overall it has a ‘Charlie Brown muttering about Mondays’ mood. Katz has said that the band intended ‘IDWBWY’ to “sound like slow-motion, or like slowly moving through a star field like those old Microsoft screen savers.” Mission accomplished – the track unfurls as glacially as a cumulonimbus that ominously ends up occupying 90% of the sky. “I don’t want to be without you,” Katz pleads, thus summing up the thematic premise of 90% of songs.
The stop-start bass line on ‘Bad News’ is a major reason why the track is reminiscent of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s dark funk. It’s also notable for a Mars Volta-inspired guitar solo that sounds like a viper being strangled. On ‘Future Me’, Katz is hopeful – “There is still time to do many things” – yet the underwater guitar contributes to a feeling that we’re in Sufjan Stevens sad territory. While it is true that there is time, one hopes that it won’t be another six and a half years until the next Peaer record.
Doppelgänger is out now on Danger Collective
Review by Neil Laurenson
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