Peggy Sue – Vices

Vices finds Peggy Sue dispelling bad behaviour and toxic relationships – a notion we can all relate to at a time of climatic and political flux

Album Review by Cheri Amour | 24 Feb 2020
  • Peggy Sue – Vices
Album title: Vices
Artist: Peggy Sue
Label: French Exit
Release date: 21 Feb

For a band that has transcended a decade, Peggy Sue’s musical output has remained fairly consistent. Their debut, 2010’s Fossils and Other Phantoms, came out at a time where anything vaguely acoustic became synonymous with Mumford and Sons’ nu-folk aesthetics. For their not-so-difficult second album Acrobats, Katy Young and Rosa Slade leaned on a darker sound guided by John Parish, notorious for his work with PJ Harvey.

But it was the band’s last release 2014’s Choir of Echoes that saw Peggy Sue performing to some of the biggest crowds of their career. Although rather than propel the pair into stratospheric plains of popularity, Young and Slade took a step back. Acknowledging that the way they’d been making music wasn’t necessarily all that good for them, they sought to bring positivity back to Peggy Sue.

If Choir of Echoes found solidarity through the human voice, Vices is the band dispelling bad behaviour and toxic relationships – a notion we can all relate to at a time of climatic and political flux. Purists will revel at the band’s return to form. Longstanding producer Jimmy Robertson is back on board (the man behind Choir of Echoes and the band’s 2012 musical accompaniment to short film Scorpio Rising).

Tender lament Remainder Blues champions the pair’s signature interwoven melodies while standout Better Days reflects on a gentle sort of acceptance: 'This is the best that we can do for the moment'. In Dreams masters the spaghetti strings and snare trills that others have run with in their absence (see: Juniore, La Luz) while Validate Me cleverly taps into a very millennial conversation starter as we all desperately grapple for a moment of recognition.

While Peggy Sue never quite reached the dizzy heights of Mumford and Sons’ stadium-sized tours, their artfully woven narratives are more than double-tap worthy of it.

Listen to: Motorcade, Validate Me, In Dreams

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