Alice Peacock
Love Remains
Rocket Science/Adrenaline
By Al Kaufman
After 2005's introspective and piano-laden Who I Am, Alice Peacock moved to Nashville from Chicago and reinvented herself as a country girl with rock tendencies.
There's plenty of twang on Love Remains. And there's plenty of Peacock's vocals. Strong, sexy and soulful sum them up quite well, but she retains a sort of country twang that adds a bit of innocence.
"I'd like to get stoned," she sings at the beginning of the electric guitar-heavy opening song, "All About Me." But she quickly realizes that she is just not wired that way. It's a gorgeous song in the vein of Kasey Chambers.
Sometimes her naivete goes a bit overboard. On "If I Could Talk to God," she imagines God's message would be "learn to love each other." Not exactly the most insightful look into God's mysterious ways. She opens up "Forgiveness with "Can music change the world, yeah I think it can / Can love conquer all, well I know it can." This is the kind of stuff that is to be expected in the journal of a 16-year-old girl, not a talented songwriter.
She is at her best when she shows off her rock 'n' roll side. "Real Life" is a rollicking, feel-good ditty that many Dixie Chick fans would sing along to. And "City of Angels," yet another Los Angeles kiss-off song, would be a number one hit if it had the name "Sheryl Crow" after it instead of "Alice Peacock." In fact, if someone heard the song on the radio, he would simply assume it was a Sheryl Crow song.
The daughter of a Methodist preacher, Peacock lets her gospel influences slip into the soulful "Trying to Hold Back Time," about a new mother who doesn't know how she got to this stage of her life. It's a song that begs for a chorus, but Peacock's vocals are strong enough to pull it off with limited back-up vocals.
Alice Peacock has the goods. An eventual breakthrough is inevitable. Her songwriting will only get better, and her voice is as good as it gets.
Alice Peacock plays Eddie's Attic on Saturday, April 25th. 8 p.m. $12 advance, $15 door.
