Peg - Sideshows (2023)

Sheridan Riley is best known as one of the most accomplished young rock drummers in the Pacific Northwest; in recent years, they have collaborated with Alvvays, Hand Habits, Cassandra Jenkins, and more. Their solo releases demonstrate tremendous breadth—see last year’s Participant, a phantasmagoric, improvisation-driven collage built around spoken word source material. For listeners who came to Riley through that project, the debut album from their new singer-songwriter project Peg is guaranteed to be a surprise, consisting entirely of uptempo rock songs with a ‘70s avant-pop flair. The elevator pitch seems familiar, but the execution is not. Their new record Sideshows is characterized by a distinctive blend of unexpected sonic detailing, cerebral lyrics, and emotional catharsis couched in self-reflexive humor. represents not only a breakthrough for Riley’s artistry on its own terms; it is the introduction of an exciting and singular songwriting voice by any standard.

Recorded between 2018 and early 2020, Sideshows collects material Riley wrote over the span of nearly a decade, playing like a greatest hits collection of songs drawn from non-existent LPs. Though their work as an instrumentalist focuses on texture and spontaneously generated structures, the songcraft on Sideshows is as meticulous as the arrangements, rendered by an ensemble featuring Seattle multi-instrumentalists and interdisciplinary artists like Luke Bergman (Heatwarmer), 5-Track and Jesse Miller. Riley has a natural ear for sticky-but-unconventional hooks and is careful to avoid stock chord progressions. The lyrics offer glimpses of shadowy characters in emotional crisis, rendered in playful and sometimes verbose poetry. Stories that come across as personal zoom out suddenly, incorporating broader ruminations on the human condition: “Musing over the people who need people/Are they really the luckiest people?” The record, fittingly, begins with a voice memo clip: “It’s crazy how other people live their lives.”