Peter Mulvey Kitchen Radio CD

After taking a break from the burden of songwriting with 2003's Ten Thousand Mornings, Peter Mulvey returns in 2004 with Kitchen Radio, an album filled with new compositions. As with Eliza Gilkyson's recent release, Land of Milk and Honey, Mulvey has serious things on his mind but he's not about to spell them out in any obvious way. In "29 Cent Head," it's evident that all isn't well in the land of the free, home of the brave. But even while certain problems are stated -- all elections are the same, priests are perverts, and no one cares -- the song's setup and elliptical images are too artful to reveal its overall purpose ("...When you look behind the curtain to where the puppetmaster sat/There's just an empty chair/And the strings are lying flat"). Mulvey takes an equally oblique approach to songs about relationships. "Falling" seems to be about a guy meeting a girl who is able to break down his defenses, despite his demons that tell him to hold back. But the story is sketched so vaguely, it's really hard to tell who's doing what for whom. Depending on one's point of view, this method of writing is either more poetic than the typical protest and love song, or frustratingly obscure. Even the listener wishing for greater clarity will nonetheless appreciate the simple arrangements and clean production of Kitchen Radio, highlighted by acoustic and electric guitars and vacillating between tasteful folk and rock. Kitchen Radio is a well-wrought effort with a nicely honed sound that will please anyone who enjoys thoughtful songwriting. ~ Ronnie D. Lankford Jr.

When he is home, Peter Mulvey begins his day as many people do, with the news of the day pouring out of the radio on his kitchen counter. Where that leads him, though, is the real story here. With Kitchen Radio, Mulvey's third album for Signature Sounds (his eighth overall and his first album of original material in four years - see Discography below), he has put the songwriting solidly front and center, and the result is a moving, deft portrait of a place where the personal and the worldwide intersect. Peter Mulvey and longtime writing partner and producer David "Goody" Goodrich set the mood with vibrant, often surprising musical ideas. Supported by an excellent band of Boston's musical veterans, Mulvey's Kitchen Radio is an album of original music performed with grit and abandon. From this music arise lyrics with great economy, emotional resonance, and clarity. Images of travel and longing weave through the album - a longing for meaning, for love, for home, for a peaceful world, for peace of mind. Mulvey says his writing process occurs "on airport runways, late at night in bed, across the kitchen table from Goody, and wherever else it seems to want to happen," and on Kitchen Radio, as on all of his albums, from this process come songs which seem to want to happen; there's nothing forced here. "Shirt" is a love song to moments given and snatched away by time. "Sad, Sad, Sad, Sad (and Faraway from Home)" is a rollicking basher, a tour de force for the unreliable narrator. "29ΒΆ Head" leaves us proud to make no sense of a nonsensical world. Kitchen Radio is clearly the work of an artist fully grown. Peter Mulvey began as a self-described "city kid" from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He played, wrote, and sang in bands while studying theatre there, and then traveled to Dublin, Ireland, where he learned the trade of the street singer. Returning to the States, he spent a few years in Boston, building an audience through street and subway performing, while also immersing himself in the thriving musical community. He recorded two projects for the now-defunct Boston imprint Eastern Front, and since his 2000 release The Trouble with Poets, has made records with the venerable singer/songwriter label Signature Sounds. His previous CD, 2002's Ten Thousand Mornings, recorded back on his favorite Boston subway platform, is a set of long-loved covers by the likes of Randy Newman, Gillian Welch, E