Defiant, dramatic and probably a little bit of a showboat, bandleader Allen Clapp tells it like it is on “Shining Like Stars,” a glittered-out rocker from the band’s forthcoming album, 2020: “If making melodies is a crime, I’m guilty as charged.” As the title suggests, 2020 deals with perceptions. Being released on the precipice of a new decade, the album is as much about looking back on 10 years gone awry as it is about looking forward to the promises of the future. Sometimes life comes at us in crystal clear geometry and hard numbers, and sometimes details reveal themselves only in the soft-focus of memory. Moving in and out of focus through these 10 songs, the band has achieved its own vision on its own terms. Recording the album at its modernistic Eichler headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, the band took its time to decorate each track (or in some cases, de-decorate) for maximum emotional impact. “It’s not our job to just record a performance and dump it on the unsuspecting public,” Clapp says. “It’s incumbent upon us to drill down into the soul of what makes each song tick and bring that up to the surface. It’s like raw, emotional source code.” Featuring Clapp on vocals, piano guitar and drums, Oed Ronne (The Ocean Blue) on lead guitars, electric sitar and vibes, Jill Pries on bass guitars, Bob Vickers (The Incredible Vickers Bros.) on drums and guitars, John Moremen (Jad Fair, the Roy Loney Band) on guitars, all the current and itinerant members of the band are represented. Even original Orange Peels lead guitarist Larry Winther took off his reunion-era Mummies bandages for a few minutes to grace the album’s lead track with a chickeny guitar solo. The album will be released digitally through Chicago’s Minty Fresh, and on CD and a limited-pressing of heavy-duty, 180-gram vinyl by the band on its own Mystery Lawn Music record label. The deal represents a near perfect balance of label expertise and DIY marketing. The band’s fanbase actually funded the vinyl pressing through pre-orders on the Orange Peels’ online shop. The gravity of that fact is not wasted on the band. “It really makes you feel accountable to your fans. They’re putting down their money before even hearing the recordings—their faith in us really made us take this to the next level,” Clapp says. For Clapp, the subtitle of the album may as well be “What I did on My Recession.” Out of work for 10 months in the worst economy of his lifetime, Clapp poured his anxiety, neuroses and plethora of available time into pushing the album to completion. Hibernating in the studio with the heartbreak and uncertainty of the times, the band crafted words and melodies to make sense of it all. 2020 is their answer. +++ “Wonderfully sugar-coated with a melancholy heart, the record glides past on waves of gently strummed guitars, swooning Mellotron strings, and heavenly vocal harmonies.”|—ALL MUSIC “The Orange Peels stand tall against the tide of musical darkness, raging against the dying of the light with a nice line in clever pop hookery, wielding warm summery harmonies with the most delicate of touches.”|—POPMATTERS “Design, music and fashion are cross-pollinating as never before. Allen Clapp, the lead singer and songwriter for The Orange Peels is doing his bit, recording his band’s latest album in a modernistic Eichler home.”|—NEW YORK TIMES “The Orange Peels put a fresh and beguiling spin on the holy pop trinity of the Byrds, the Beach Boys and Burt Bacharach.”|—LA WEEKLY “If you’re hooked by the sweeping catchiness of The Doves or the sunnier songs from early on in Radiohead’s career, you’ll take quite a liking to The Orange Peels. They make songs for paradise . . .”|—Adequacy.net “The sweet secret of The Orange Peels is that this guitar-bass-drums and occasional-keyboard combo has somehow created sublime Orch-Pop with out any actual orchestra.”|—TIME OUT NEW YORK |
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