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Review: 'Maggie Teachout'
'Maybe I'm Still Just Peter'   

-  Label: 'Green Monkey Records'
-  Genre: 'Indie' -  Release Date: '25.1.19.'-  Catalogue No: 'GM1051'

Our Rating:
This is 18 year old Maggie Teachout's debut album and not only are all the songs hers so is the fabulous artwork that would have made me look at it in a record shop. She grew up in Olympia Washington as part of the Traditional Music scene and damn this is an accomplished debut album. My review cd also comes with an adorable handwritten sticker on the Cd from Maggie pointing out that track 11 isn't FCC compliant and what the singles are. As for what the album title means I have no real idea but it could be a reference to gender dysphoria or just some local slang that hasn't reached this side of the pond or old gits like me yet.

The album opens with Colorblind an urgent love song of sorts that reminds me a good bit of Alanis Morrisette, it's fun and at the same times the lyrics dig deep into what makes things work.

Lemonade Day makes me think of Throwing Muses at the more acoustic end of that band's music. It has some cool lyrics and vocals that have something in common with how Gretchen Phillips often sings.

Vinegar is slower and more plaintive and is about Vinegar rather than using the word in the vernacular, the song also has the sort of build that will really work well live although I'm still wondering how vinegar might of saved her.

Make A Sound has a nice woozy feel to it and some real nice acoustic guitar as the song unfolds with the sort of lyrics you need to hear a few times to properly figure out Just make sure you make a sound.

Fire At The Hem is a song of lust and fire that sort of reminds me of early Joan Armatrading as the lyrics really bring up so great and at times disturbing images a very cool song.

Waitress is one of those songs where the singer wonders if she could be a waitress or an astronaut rather than a very accomplished young singer songwriter, which will at least give her some other skills for when she isn't on tour. Oh and the sparse percussion works brilliantly on this as well. If she waits tables as well as she sings, she'll make great tips.

Indie Movie Romance is lyrically almost like a short pitch for a Movie she wants to make or see full of awkward teens doing typical awkward teen stuff, including stuff about writing songs in her bedroom, this is both knowing and still full of innocence. Towards the end it has some dialogue and action from her imaginary movie battling with the music in a cool soundtrack kind of way. This won't be the song they play during the Prom scene thankfully, although it does remind me a bit of Poe.

Waltz For My Daughter is an intriguing song title for an 18 year old to be writing, I hope it's fictional, the song also features her younger sister Ruby from The Bow Weevils on backing vocals. It does however mainly sound like the advice their mother has given them on how to survive in this world of ours.

Cosmos is a song if I was reviewing her live I would have claimed was Heart Of The artist that comes next, either way this features some almost rap sung vocals that is a cool almost love song with some really interesting violin playing that sort of envelops the song and I'm suddenly trying to remember if it's a Carole King or Joanie Mitchell song it reminds me of either way it's one of the real highlights on a pretty great album.

So continuing the Heart Of The Artist theme on Heart Of the Artist that it really sounds like a very cool questioning song about art and well the Cosmos as if both songs could share titles and work best taken together to illustrate a deeper part of how she sees herself, it's remarkable mature and slightly wistful as she sings repeatedly about a point of singularity.

Then we get to the radio unfriendly Motherfucker where she sings in a nice almost low-fi indie tweepop way about how art is a motherfucker and the lyrics are far more literate and complicated than you'd expect from a song called Motherfucker, it certainly has a more mature outlook than Nashville Pussy's Go Motherfucker Go or Turbonegro's Don't Call me Motherfucker, Motherfucker to name two songs with similar names.

Still Standing is a post-fight song of survival and moving on that's nothing like the similarly titled Elton John classic thankfully, this is more like The Spinanes.

The album closes with the dreamy laid-back Odysseus that just re-enforces what a strong debut album this is.

If Maggie Teachout doesn't end up as a hugely successful artist there really is something wrong with today! Find out more at https://greenmonkeyrecords.bandcamp.com/album/maybe-im-still-just-peter https://www.facebook.com/maggie.teachout.9
  author: simonovitch

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