Review of Peter Lacey's Last Leaf (his new cd)

[Peter Reum]

When Peter sends me an album, it is at once a joy and a challenge.....his albums are consistently a pleasure to hear. Upon repeated listens his albums reveal a depth that descends directly from the English Folk-Rock countryside artists of the Seventies and yet, they show a profound respect for Peter's listeners. Peter's songs allow his listeners to interpret his music in a manner that brings emotional attachment, personalizing, and interpretation. This album is quite unique in Peter's work, and is reminiscent of Brian Wilson's Smile's Second Movement or the suite of Brian's tunes that conclude the Surfs Up album.

The work Peter has put together here forms a song cycle about the seasons, yet also reflects many of the feelings a person feels going through the human experience of grief. Peter shared with me that his parents both passed away over the past year or so, and the realization that we are alone without our parents in this world is a profound life change that every human must experience. Peter asks you, the listener, to join him on this journey. The album's opening song,  Country Mile, is the invitation.

The Woodwind, the second song, is both a reflection and a request for Music to lift the composer out of his deep grief into a  better state of being. Anyone who has experienced a deep state of grief will recognize immediately that we begin to put our lives back together by turning to the aspects of life that bring joy. For Peter, Music has served this need, and he again turns to music to lift him up. Sunrise Rise, the album's third song, alludes to the changing of the seasons, asking life to return to balance after a long cold winter of grief.

Right As Rain is a tune that reflects the innocence of Spring gently removing the winter of discontent, with the return of life, reminding the listener of newness of life, and also the generations that succeed the generations that have passed. The interrelationship of lives gone and lives coming is one of the joyful mysteries of life itself... The Tree of Life.....our lives, so fragile, so fleeting, so precious. Harvest Moon is a reflection on death, the fact that the scythe eventually falls for all of us, making room for new life. Suffice to say that we all live our lives our own way, and the fact that we must die makes us aware of the sweetness of Life, however brief it may be.

Seven Hills to Hangleton is a pretty instrumental, serving the function of a palette cleanser, a way of giving the listener a brief respite before Last Leaf's song cycle resumes. It is a perfect tune for this purpose. The album's next song, Fisherman, alludes to the realization some people have in the winter of their life, having realized that they walked unconscious through their days, unaware of their own soul, their lot at the end of their days being a life walked through in a clueless manner.

The Gatekeeper, the next song, speaks of an Outlander, a person who is out of place, out of time itself. The song is reminiscent of the writings of C.S. Lewis, especially his work concerning Narnia. The waltz tempo is deceiving, as the song is a powerful reflection on consciousness, especially self-consciousness. In my field of Rehabilitation Psychology, we refer to gatekeepers as the people who determine whether healing is probable or even possible. There is a tendency for those people, those gatekeepers, to lose their compassion and treat people as a file, not a person. They have heard it all before. The next tune, Swallow begins vigorously, as life does.....children have so much energy. It then grows quiet and moves into a rhythm that is warm and mellow, as middle life can be. This chrysalis we call Life is warm and brief, in the sense of our tempestuous Universe. A narrator shares a fable of a sparrow enjoying a brief time of warmth, Life, then reentering the tempest outside Life.

They say no one has true faith until they are on their deathbed. When a relative passes after suffering at the end of Life, due to regret or illness, how are we, the survivors and caregivers to feel? When my own mother passed at 92 of Alzheimer's Disease, I felt relief, survivor's guilt, angry, desolate, forsaken. On my last visit to her she thought she was 17 years old, and asked me if I wanted to date her. The smile on her face belied the emptiness in her eyes. She wasn't there.....Peter's own feelings turn up in the next two songs, He Is Sleeping and Boy In the Rings of a Tree. Poignantly, he reflects on his father's suffering, then comforts himself by saying his father is sleeping. Peter then places his own life in perspective by thinking of his father as a permanent part of the Tree of Life... broken branches, emotional isolation, the physicality of aloneness. A rose plucked dies immediately, but brings sweet fragrance and memories to those around it. Memories, dried flowers in a book, pictures....capturing a time long ago, in Life.

This is Peter's best work to date. Born of pain, it brings great beauty to those who will take the time to listen.




The album may be found at Amazon Digital Download and through pinkhedgehog.com


Text copyright 2014 by Peter Reum-All Rights Reserved