As we said in our preview last month, Seattle-based folk musician Joseph De Natale is about to release his début album, Redoubt, under the moniker Faint Peter. Two years in the making, Redoubt promises to deliver nine tracks of augmented folk music, a sound which the blurb describes as:
“Anchored by steady, finger-picked guitar and graceful instrumentation, De Natale’s plaintive voice soars amidst lush, cathedral-sized reverb”
As we said in our preview, De Natale, “[Does] things the proper way… record[ing] in various living rooms and basements around the city of Seattle, using a portable studio set up and help from some of the area’s luminaries (such as Philip Kobernik of Hey Marseilles). The result promises to build on a bedrock of guitar/vocals folk music and elevate it with layered harmonies and a cinematic ambience.”
The intro, ‘Wherever We Go’, is slow and considered, threatening to unfurl in luscious instrumentation, before ‘The Well’ delivers a slice of spacious folk, with acoustic guitars and soaring vocals which will appeal to fans of fellow Seattle act, Valley Maker. ‘Waiting’ is a highly polished acoustic song in the vein of Donovan Woods, a sleeper smash hit just waiting for some director to use it in his well-made romantic drama, the lyrics telling a story of love and heartache:
“I don’t wanna wait to go back home
And it feels like I’m running out of ways to be alone
I think on it every day
But it ain’t every easy to say
I don’t know when I’ll go home”
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‘Way To Die’ builds on acoustic guitars with gently galloped percussion and straining vocals, feeling at once intimate and expansive, while ‘The Cure’ feels like the gentle dawn of spring, a delicate acoustic song in the vein of Death Cab or Family of the Year’s acoustic tracks. Again it’s something of a love song, but phrased in the past as if the good times are over “You were an island hidden by the storm / I washed ashore and your beaches kept me warm,” De Natale sings, “But that was long ago and now it feels / Like being drowned beneath the churning wheel.” ‘Dear’ is another spacious and emotive track, and ‘What You Took’ a heartfelt ballad is the vein of Small Houses, sung from a lonely perspective after the end of a relationship, tense lulls and passionate bursts swapping and swaying in the current.
“I didn’t leave a letter, handwritten and hidden
in the pages of your favorite book
I didn’t leave one damn thing
And I sold my wedding ring
I’m just making up for what you took”
The next track, ‘Texas’, feels like the natural follow-on, the narrator journeying south in an attempt to fill the newly-created void in his heart. “Headed down to Texas, gonna find myself a girl / and try to make her fit into my heaven / cause there’s gotta be somebody in this God-forsaken world / who can find a way to put me back together.”It’s a traditional travelling folk song, ending in triumphant horns and a quiet, secret sense of hope for an imagined new love with which everything will be okay, as he repeats the line “maybe she will save my life”. The last track ‘Ontario’ zooms us back up north, slow and soft and considered, acoustic guitars and breathy vocals providing a hushed and gentle end. The lyrics are in some ways the opposite kind of hope to the previous track, seeing the narrator give up on miracles and attempt to move forward with what he has. But it’s just as hopeful, the sentiment in the lines, “Sometimes we try / too hard to find a way / to make tomorrow come today,” somehow comforting, a sign that things get better even if a dark-skinned Mexican beauty doesn’t sweep you off your feet immediately.
Redoubt will be released on the 25th of February. You can order it now via the Faint Peter Bandcamp page.