Why I had not encountered it before: I can’t explain. After all, downtempo chillwave spread thin across a backdrop of the droll, androgynous French speaking seems like a perfect combination. Seductive and melancholic, Peter Peter’s second album is a hauntingly poetic affair even if one isn’t familiar with the language spoken here. Throughout
Une Version Améliorée De La Tristesse, the artist from Quebec strives an impenetrable world enveloped by synths and keyboards, and it is mostly without missteps. In fact, it revels in the commonplace and unremarkable. The album is relaxing in the same way as a glass of lemonade and a good book on a sunny afternoon is -- cliché and expected, but delightful nonetheless. While
Version isn’t without its unexpected moments, like the saxophone on the closer which (even if it’s a little too reminiscent of
Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming) stands as a clear highlight, much of it
is perfectly pacifying. Yet, this approach is not without its drawbacks. The affair could have been more succinct, as one doesn’t need the full 35 minutes to appreciate the world at stake, here. An EP would have been more appropriate given the homogeny; still, homogeny gives way to harmony, which is
Version’s key attribute. In this way Peter Peter is utterly similar to his most successful, blissful, starry and chilled-out peers like Memoryhouse and Toro Y Moi. Simplistic and rather derivative, Peter Peter doesn’t break any barriers. With the right expectations though,
Une Version can be a welcome surprise, a chill way to ring in a new batch of tunes in 2013.
