Album DescriptionSimultaneously looking into the future and the past has always been a hallmark of The Orange Peels.
With the band's first album in four years, "2020" (Minty Fresh) coming on the cusp of a new decade, it's easy to imagine the San Francisco group reflecting on a decade gone awry, while contemporaneously peering into the promises of the future.
Or maybe it's an almost pointalistic journey through the mysteries of Autumns past-with the added benefit of perfect hindsight. A place where life-altering microseconds are expanded out into 5-minute explorations; off-the-cuff observations are distilled into melodic motifs, and the march of the seasons translates into lurching beats.
Whatever listeners decide, it all comes together in brilliant reds and golds viewed through the soft-focus of memory ... or maybe it's just a bad case of myopia. This collection finds the Peels branching out-genre-bending glitter rock, cabaret pop, and glammy prog sit alongside melancholy popsongs and epic anthems.
It also finds singer-songwriter Allen Clapp bringing back all the itinerant members of the band from over its 10-year history to perform on the album. Produced by Clapp at his modernistic Eichler tract home in Sunnyvale, California, the album features Clapp on vocals and piano, Oed Ronne on guitars, Jill Pries on bass, Bob Vickers on guitars and drums, John Moremen on guitars and original guitarist Larry Winther making a guest appearance on the lead track.