Viola Peacock - The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (1996, Bedazzled)

Hard to believe, but it's taken me over a year to get around to following up my initial Viola Peacock entry from last summer.  At the time I remarked that this Ann Arbor, MI troupe had come to the table in 1995 bearing moderate dream pop inclinations, in keeping with one of their home states finest exports of the period, Majesty Crush.  Well, fast forward to 1996 for VP's first (and from what I gather only) proper full length, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, which illustrates the trio's desire to skew further into the vicinity of downer indie-rock, sans much of the woozy tremolo.  The result is an album with lengthier pieces (four surpassing the seven-minute mark in fact) and an unmistakably contemplative ethos.  If you're an aficionado of the droney, albeit tuneful soundscapes concocted by New Radiant Storm King, Sometime Sweet Susan, or even early Afghan Whigs, it would behoove you to give this a spin.  

01. The Big Slip
02. An Angel a Week
03. February
04. The City Behind Us
05. Burnt
06. Gael
07. Chemical Babies
08. Downtime
09. The Old Universe

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