Peasant Revolt and Roger Harvey Reviewed
Peasant Revolt – All Dressed Up
Is it a way to predict what’s going to happen? What if we had a way of knowing if all of those predicted terrible events that the news channels keep selling us are actually going to come true? Well, dear reader, I have to burst your bubble, but there is. It’s called “the past”, and it tends to repeat itself maddeningly and predictably.
And, judging by the lessons it offers us, things are going to be somewhat good, kind of bad, and they’ll keep moving that way for longer than any of us will care to know. It’s enough to make you smile and turn your attention to other problems such as music. Is it all bound to change? Are we going to be caught unprepared by all these fast-altering trends? Peasant Revolt don’t think so.
In fact, the band’s looking at the people building the chaos and then letting it fall on top of them, and they can’t help but smile. Musically, fittingly, the band is taking a cue from the past for “All Dressed Up,” and finding a familiar bluesy, garage-rock groove to lean on. It’s a charmer, and enough to make you stop worrying. If Peasant Revolt are right, the blues is here to stay, but so are the little thrills and timid smiles.
Roger Harvey – Blue Mountain
It was very rarely good, and certainly things weren’t normal. But you couldn’t have known it at the time. In fact, if you’re like most people, you just went along with your childhood, believing that this was just the way people lived and the way things were bound to stay anywhere else in the world.
Still, if you got really lucky, you got a peek through the curtain. You saw other places, other people and other ways of being. And you might’ve soaked up some of those habits, some of the way that folks over there try to resolve problems. It probably felt good enough, too, that you began to think about your own upbringing and noticed the discrepancy.
A lot of people have gone through that, and Roger Harvey, very poignantly and directly, wants to ask them: “Why carry on living in a place that is just wrong for you?” “Blue Mountain” is a gorgeous and very subtle country tune. It’s about working with the blues everywhere you go, getting used to that burden on your back. Still, as you hear Harvey beautifully sing those words, you might start to wonder why it’s you that has to carry all of that.
