Doug Tuttle
Peace Potato

Sometimes when we find ourselves in front of certain landscapes, I think of what can be stretches of meadows or the interiors of a park, when there is no one, it almost seems like looking at a painting or a photograph.

The thought mainly goes to a certain pictorial art and which, moreover, constitutes a form of artistic expression that has always considered 'landscapes' as one of the typical and recurring subjects, and this in different genres and movements over the centuries until today.

What then happens can be curious: because you don't think about the landscape in itself and for what it is, but you consider it as a portrayal, a representation that has been drawn and painted in a certain way and as such it appears untouchable. As if this were already in itself a painting and where you, if you enter it, become a foreign element: a kind of mistake because, behold, you really shouldn't be in that painting at all.

But apart from this, if you enter a painting, then how can you look at it. Put in these terms, the thing actually wouldn't make sense, if you think about it, because paintings are apparently made only to be looked at. Even if you would like to live inside them instead.

Do not believe that for this reason they are nonetheless immutable: I am indeed convinced that every time you look at a painting carefully, you might notice in it the slightest changes and basically it is the same for the reality that surrounds us. If you photograph a certain place every day even at the same time, you will eventually notice that it has somehow changed over time. This means that it is impossible to stop time and even when you want to immortalize it on a painting or with a photograph or even inside a video recording, in the end, we are destined to fail.

Doug Tuttle with this latest album, however, tries to go beyond this concept and to literally beat the passage of time in the representation of musical 'landscapes' that are at the same time relaxing, dreamy (possibly even mysterious) and evocative like the one depicted on the album cover (photo by Amanda Bristow).

A multi-instrumentalist from Boston, Massachusetts, Doug David Tuttle released his latest album last May, renewing the established partnership with Trouble In Mind Records of Chicago, Illinois. The album was entirely conceived by Doug, who wrote and recorded all the songs himself, managing to propose a work ('Peace Potato') that remains an anomaly and completely unpredictable in its contents even in a historical moment in which it seems we cannot be unsettled by anything and where especially in a genre that many believe is now running out, like neo-psychedelia, everything seems already done.

He manages this by practically painting fifteen songs that are, in truth, fifteen brief episodes and glimpses of landscapes with a duration varying between thirty seconds and a maximum of three minutes: a very particular choice where some songs almost seem to constitute experiments or demos, or what could be defined as b-sides and which sometimes seem almost incomplete and where sometimes these even stop abruptly to immediately give space to the next track.

A particularly capable musician who is aware of what he is doing and trying to propose to his audience, we can liken Doug Tuttle to his great masters like a musician such as Dino Valente and particularly to a guitarist and composer like George Harrison. His references to sixties psychedelia are evident in every composition from the very first track, 'Bait The Sun', a psychedelic pop ballad in the arrangements and for the characteristic use of vintage organs, and in any case in all the songs present on the album.

The same suggestions permeate the entirety of the work from 'YCNTOIO' to the solely instrumental and experimental episode of 'Life Boat,' the arpeggios and the instrumental 'coda' of 'In Your Light,' the Simon & Garfunkel visions of the title track, the dreamlike ballad 'Only In A Dream'. 'Can It Be', 'Don't Worry', 'It's Alright With Me, Ma' can refer as much to a certain David Bowie as to bands like the Kinks or the Byrds ('You Have Begun') as to contemporary musical realities of the neo-psychedelia scene like Temples or Jacco Gardner ('All You See') and the sensitivity of Bill Fay ('Home Again', 'But Not Of You'...).

Moreover, without wishing to force matters, this work reminded me on a conceptual level precisely of a Bill Fay album, namely that 'Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow' released in 2005 under the name Bill Fay Group and which also presented itself as a collection of psychedelic pop compositions with progressive suggestions and a certain lo-fi attitude regarding the type of recording and the structure of the album.

The final feeling in front of this album is not exactly that of being in front of a masterpiece. Yet 'Peace Potato' has something magical that compels you to start it over and listen to it in its entirety each time it ends in a kind of continuum where instead of stopping time and these 'landscapes' that flow before the mind's eye, you finally delve into these 'paintings' without feeling out of place and instead begin to run finally free across the meadows and without worries.