Review: PEGGY mixes magic and literature on ‘Dear Reader’ EP

Much like pages of a book, an album can carry with it astounding beauty and images so vast and clear that you see them play out in brilliant detail in your mind. As her debut for Nettwerk, pop purveyor PEGGY attempts a stageplay by ripping pages from the classics as a way to dress up her own resounding observations.

A six-track collection, Dear Reader flicks its finger-pricking lyrics through various pages of literature. Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Ophelia from Hamlet (among numerous other characters) emerge centerstage as shining, rustic muses by which Peggy navigates her own understanding of self, fear, and lovesickness. Her voice, feathered and light, almost angelic in yellow, flutters over the melodies, even as the words encompass the weight of two two-ton anvils.

You’d be hard-pressed to uncover a dud in the bunch. Where “Flight Risk” sweeps through the skies, zeroing in on her commitment issues, “Feminine Rage” combs grungy vibrations for an EP opener that rattles the bones and gets the blood coursing in bursts of fire. Dear Reader bounces along from the illusion-shattering “Alice” (“Wonderland was all a hoax,” she hisses) to the twinkling “30 Second Love Story,” a spiritual successor to Taylor Swift’s own “Love Story.”

Peggy devises her stories with lacy fringe and delightful accents that give the lyrics a way to escape into the ether. Dear Reader emerges as an impressively insightful and cutting debut that firmly plants PEGGY as one of today’s most promising young talents.

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