Peals - The Compound 76 Peals

Four years near the beginning of the last decade, William Cashion and Bruce Willen created quietly radiant instrumental music from two tessellated guitars, a few modest synths, and a slew of percussive and noisy toys, like walkie-talkies or the things that gave the pair their handle, bells. This 2016 live recording is taken from the band’s next-to-last show, at least for now, cut in an artist-run space called The Compound in their hometown of Baltimore. Peals is the project of two bassists known best for their other livewire and loud Baltimore bands: Future Islands for Cashion, Double Dagger for Willen. Technically, Double Dagger—an absolutely electrifying post-punk trio—had reached its end just as Cashion and Willen began talking about trying to make music together, but that context never really mattered.

Peals emerged at an inconvenient moment for their sort of instrumental wonder. The noisy international explorations of great acts like Yellow Swans, Growing, and Fuck Buttons (all duos, mind you) had mostly subsided before Peals played their first show in April 2012. And the current bloom in New Age and ambient music was very much still germinating, those terms still catching substantial side-eye from arbiters of acceptability. That was steadily changing, however, as Peals offered this set in September 2016, with the United States unknowingly at the edge of successive upheavals that would increasingly make such sounds feel like requisite medicine.

Writing to you from 2026, then, this recording does not feel at all out-of-time, like some overlooked gem that was simply swallowed by its moment. It sounds relevant, welcoming, welcome.

- Grayson Haver Currin