Peter Broderick: Blackberry

For Peter, "Blackberry" marks the first studio album in five years on which he can be heard as a singer again; he last presented the vocal album "Colours Of The Night" in 2015. He recorded the new record entirely in his own bedroom in London in the summer of 2019 - which is why he describes it as "experimental bedroom folk-pop". While the 33-year-old recorded all of the instruments himself, the only time he gets assistance is on the closing track "Wild Food", when Peter shares the microphone with his wife, singer Brigid Mae Power, and stepson Seán Power. Blackberry's content range is broad. Among other things, he addresses the theme of family, the bonds we all need as social beings. Another theme is technology, combined with the question of whether progress will turn out to be a blessing or a doom. And of course Peter also writes about nature: about gathering and searching for edibles, about the importance of connecting to the outside world, both in the cities and in the countryside. Drawn to the spectacular nature of Ireland, Peter and his family have recently returned to County Galway, where they had lived before moving to London in 2019. Peter Broderick is perhaps best known as a live member of Efterklang, having toured regularly with the Danish band from 2007 to 2013. He has also spent years delving deeply into the Arthur Russell archives, and in his role as restorer, editor and mixing specialist, brought the US icon's latest posthumously released work to fruition. In the process, Broderick has also released more than 20 albums as a solo musician over the past 13 years, and has also composed the music for various film and dance productions; most recently, his soundtrack to the multi-award winning animated film Two Balloons. Rather than curbing his creativity and settling on a single genre, Peter's work to date has incorporated everything from gospel and soul to spoken word, beatboxing, folk, rock and classical. His willingness to experiment, on the other hand, is a constant, as is his unconditional openness to collaborations with peers such as Nils Frahm, among others. As recently as early 2020, for example, he joined the band of Tim Burgess (The Charlatans), on whose current hit album Broderick can be heard as a violinist. The very first line of Blackberry is "You can only be as happy as the world that you live in..." - you can only be as happy as the world that you live in. A thought I'm sure many can identify with in the face of looming climate crisis, global pandemic and lockdown, and the uncertainty of how this modern world will evolve. But by presenting a soundtrack to these turbulent times, musicians like Peter Broderick give us a lifeline at the same time, present a new view of this world, in which glimmers of hope and wonder have their place.