Garcia Peoples: Dodging Dues (No Quarter)

From the one-sheet:

“[…] These songs, recorded in February and October of 2020 with Matt Sweeney producing […]

Sick of dodging dues . . . As ever, these songs have an aphoristic quality, a sense that they are concerned somehow with processing experience. We’ve found that on previous records, but when the title phrase crops up in this case (in the incredible ‘Tough Freaks’), I can’t help but think of those dues we can’t dodge: the high cost, emotional and otherwise, of living in our present moment. In the dark times will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing. About the dark times, Bertolt Brecht once wrote, but—there is also singing like this, about the ordinary difficulties of living. It’s an expression I’m exceptionally grateful for, a reminder that bands, problems and respites all continue even when human history presents its most impossible face, and a reminder that consolations are still available. Some dues can’t be dodged, but they can be reckoned with face-to-face. And when they are, if you’re lucky, you might hear music just like this: weather-beaten but utterly uncorroded, suffused with a depth of feeling and experience but utterly, irrepressibly brand new. - Matthew Specktor”