(2021) Dominic Billett - Two Peach Trees
Review:
Perpetual Doom is proud to present the debut album from Dominic Billett: Two Peach Trees. Based in Nashville but immersed in life on the road, Billett brings years of work as a professional touring musician to his first proper full-length record. It is a collection of vibrant, distinctly realized songs, drawing from an eclectic mix of sounds, styles, and studio effects and unified by Billett’s evocative lyrical insights. The result is a profound debut that speaks to the persistence of longing, artistic discovery, and the tumultuous search for peace. Two Peach Trees opens with rolling snare and breezy guitar as “Satisfied Heart” introduces its luminous, delay-laden take on classic No Depression. Stuck in some beach town missing someone at home, Billett sings of love’s poor timing: “It’s when you least expect it that new love takes your mind and runs away.” The track’s building swell sets off what could be the album’s guiding sentiment: “I’ve learned to satisfy my heart.” The album pursues that satisfaction across eleven tracks that surge and settle—from the bouncing pop of “Merida” and the noise-soaked pulse of “Around You” to the stately pace of “The Image.” Billett soaks effortless melodies in layers of intriguing noise. The ambling “Stepping Stone” drips with feedback and guitarist Jerry Bernhardt pushes the restless ballad “Want/Need” from quiet to loud. On “Rose,” Billett paints scenes of his grandmother at prayer, reflecting on the quiet desperation in those memories—“Could I learn the love from you the way you always wanted to?”—until pedal steel guitarist Spencer Cullum Jr. transforms the second-half of the track into a sweeping panorama of sound. Like Two Peach Trees as a whole, the song seeks security and contentment but finds the power in collaboration and spontaneity. Billett wrote, recorded, and performed the entirety of the album himself, but he speaks of the influences and communal spirit that inform it: “I’ve been lucky enough to befriend and play behind many literary greats, such as The Kernal, Andrew Combs, Caitlin Rose, Courtney Marie Andrews and Julia Jacklin. I feel like their songwriting has opened my eyes to what simple, powerful writing and performance can do.” Two Peach Trees offers that simplicity and power in every track.
Tracklist:
01. Satisfied Heart
02. Merida
03. The Image
04. Portrait
05. Stepping Stone
06. Around You
07. Want Need
08. A Lovely Window
09. Tropical Countries
10. Rose
11. Thinking
Media Report:
Genre: indie-folk, indie-rock
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits