Okra and Ecclesiastes-Grant Peeples
Four stars
Not many people would try to sing, let alone rhyme, ‘Ecclesiastes,’ but it’s an illustration of how far out there Peeples is compared to run of the mill songwriters. In his A Time to Tear Down And A Time to Build Up; A Rereading Of Ecclesiastes, Rabbi Michael V Fox remarks, “The boldest, most radical notion in the book is… the belief that the individual can and should proceed toward truth by means of his own powers of perception and reasoning; and that he can in this way discover truths previously unknown… He does not look to revelation or tradition for guidance.” This is an excellent summary of Peeples’ approach, and I imagine explains why Gurf Morlix, notoriously selective about his projects, chose to produce his fourth album. Living in the Florida Panhandle, Peeples’ writes, without nostalgia, sentiment or empathy, about the Southeastern underbelly, “white bread and kerosene, catfish and flatbeds, sweat stains and retreads, okra and Ecclesiastes” (My People Come From The Dirt), “Well it’s Flannery O’Connor, minus humor and redemption… It’s kinda Kafkaesque, but with that crystal meth” (Down Here In The County), “High fructose corn syrup, reality TeeVee, Taylor Swift and Burger King, Jesus and cheap gasoline” (High Fructose Corn Syrup, now there’s a song title you don’t see every day). The woman with a cart full of kids and Wal-Mart crap bought with money she doesn’t have (Down Here In the County) gets no pity from Peeples. Don’t think I’ve ever described a songwriter as being ruthless, but it’s the best word for Peeples’ bleak observations of what Morlix calls ‘the New American Landscape” as seen at grassroots level. —JC
