The debut LP of Rob Smoughton’s (Hot Chip) new project Black Peaches is titled Get Down You Dirty Rascals. The album will be released on March 4 via 1965 Records. A midway point between the swamp and the tropics, Black Peaches’ music is gloriously loose-limbed and strung-out: a psychotropic stew of country boogie, spiritual jazz and funk.
With slide guitars, Latin percussion and shimmering keyboards, their sound is a cinematic experience, the soundtrack to a bar fight at the country disco or an incantation of the black arts. At other times they swagger with the easy confidence of Little Feat, Manassas, or Dr. John to create a pulsating, unwinding groove for a hot summer’s day where no one is in too much of a hurry.
Black Peaches is not just a sextet, but in the mind Smoughton, a destination where various strands of musical flavor and color coalesce. What results is a heavenly brew, equal parts melody and groove, grit and bliss, sublimely tight and gloriously loose-limbed.
Black Peaches demanded a band format so, Smoughton sent his initial demos to musicians he hoped to rope in, like Nick Roberts, Grosvenor’s live drummer, and Charlie Michael (The Severed Limb, Shock Defeat), a master of Brazilian percussion. Smoughton had played with bassist Susumu Mukai in (Hot Chip frontman) Alexis Taylor’s live band. Duelling guitarist Adam Chetwood, is a fellow country and jazz fan and plays pedal steel too. Thomas Greene (Cold Specks) on keyboards completes a consummate line-up that added ideas to Smoughton’s demos, which he took away and wrote more parts for.
Inspirations include ’70s Nashville combo Barefoot Jerry and their guitarist Mac Gaden – that combination of southern soul and country coming together, with Caribbean or South American music seeped in.
Steven Stills’ first post-Crosby Stills Nash & Young ensemble Manassas were a blueprint in terms of Black Peaches’ line-up, with percussion and pedal steel.
Then from Brazil, the rhythm section of Baden Powell Sambas’1966 album Os Afro Sambas and the double guitar attack of the psych-tinged Novos Baianos, alongside Chicago’s funky post-rockers 5Style and Krautrock legends Can.