Better Wonder

Limited transparent blue colored vinyl LP pressing. Joining Chad Peck on this flight around is bassist Jim MacAlpine and drummer Michael Catano (both of North of America and the touring Weird Nightmare band). Peck started working on the songs that would become Kestrels' fifth album almost a decade ago; half of the tracks came from a scrapped solo album. He began composing in earnest, though, in the spring of 2021, secreted away in his house in the country. The result is a woozy, disorienting suite of tracks, like finding a secret station between channels on a late-night drive. Take album-opener Lilys, which barnstorms in on a sea of percussion and swirling guitars as the protagonist wrestles with the concept of holding on to someone without letting them know they're clinging. "It's a treatise on how two incompatible ideas can coexist to make something work," Peck says.