Customer Reviews

Smirk

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Peter Stanley's first CD is versatile, fun, a little funky, and all around great. From beautiful instrumentals, to a kind of "Techno Jazz" nightclub performance with humorous conversations in the background. Several songs have a lovely sultry background vocal to them that will really catch your ear. Definitely a cd you will listen to over and over again "My Friend".

Peter Stanley's debut CD, "Smirk" makes no apologies for being (oh the horrors!) a pop album. Nor should it. On songs like "If I had Wings" and "The Art of Falling Down" you can easily imagine Lennon & McCartney nodding approvingly as Stanley slides his musical hooks into the listener. Radio-friendly as it is, there's a battered romanticism at the heart of this album which gives it depth far beyond the typical entries in the Top 40.

There's something delightfully perverse about the sheer hummability of songs like "Everything Good" whose chorus is a smiling kiss-off to people who could improve your life most by leaving it. The same rueful smirk shows up on "Just One Thing" which seems to simultaneously warn that the game is rigged while acknowledging that it can be a lot of fun to play anyway.

Like any good pop album, Smirk has its share of love songs, and it's here that Stanley is at his most surprising. An answering machine-recorded love message loops over and over on "P.S. I Love You" in a manner which is by turns harrowing and comforting. "If I had Wings" is a straightforward, happy, love song, but "Needle to the Vein" shows the love-addict trying to deal with the onset of withdrawal.

A rocking cover of Badfinger's "No Matter What" has the undeniable, feel-good, energy that only three-chord rock and roll can bring, but the most impressive song on the album is its closer, "Welcome Home". This is romance-with-your-eyes-wide-open: love despite the pain. It's a song which disarms with its vulnerability, abandoning the self-assured smirk for the desperate hope that love really can conquer all.

To pull all this off, it helps that Stanley has a great band, complete with a hard-hitting drummer, rock-solid bassist, and a guitarist who combines muscianship and pyrotechnics into a seamless whole. The really amazing part is that all of the players are named Peter Stanley.

Yes, Stanley himself wrote, performed, and produced the entire album, drawing upon his years spent in the studio recording countless Bay Area bands (including young hipsters Smashmouth). The result is an album which is both fluid and refined, polished, yet personal. A worthy debut indeed.

Smirk is an upbeat, fun and mellow cd that mixes jazz and pop. As I listened I sort of fell into the lyrics and music as I closed my eyes and daydreamed. Pete Stanley mixes sounds that both soothe and relax the mind and soul. One can almost see in Peter Stanley's heart as he creates tender music.

Smirk is an upbeat, fun and mellow cd that mixes jazz a/pop. As I listened I sort of fell into the lyrics and music as I closed my eyes and daydreamed. Pete Stanley mixes sounds that both soothe and relax the mind and soul. One can almost see in Peter Stanley's heart as he creates tender music.

SMIRK is not your usual rock stuff. There is real art and a hell of a lot of hard to do musical stuff made to sound easy and off the cuff. A joy to the ears.