Peaceful Faces is the singer-songwriter vehicle of multiinstrumentalist and composer Tree Palmedo, who also leads the instrumental unit Drinking Bird, and—as a trumpet player—has worked with Fleet Foxes, The World Is A Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, Office Culture, and others. Since transplanting from the genre-flouting indie-rock scene of Boston to NYC in 2018, Palmedo has gained increasing recognition for his ambitious work as bandleader of a six-or-more-piece live band, working in the hallowed post-Beatles songwriting tradition furthered by Elliott Smith, Harry Nilsson, Sufjan Stevens, and more. Inevitably, Peaceful Faces’s cinema-scale pop songs are built on disarmingly earnest lyrics, gorgeous brass and synth-orchestral instrumental sections, and triumphant vocal hooks that morph and grow in significance throughout the duration of the song. His lush debut album, Letters From Late Adolescence was out in 2020, followed, one year later, by the EP Staring at the Damage. In 2023 the sprawling second album, Sifting Through The Goo, Reaching For The Candlelight, came out. Without a Single Fight, Peaceful Faces’ new album, came out in June on Glamour Gowns and features production contributions from Nate Mendelsohn (Market, Katie von Schleicher, Frankie Cosmos, Office Culture) and Dylan McKinstry (Taylor Ashton). In shadowy vignettes, Without a Single Fight’s lyrics address loss, anxiety, aging, and righteous frustration with the empty cadences of modern life.

What He Says: “This song’s inspiration was quite literal; it poured out of me when I heard about my first love’s impending nuptials. It’s a melancholy piano ballad that questions the possibility of long-term connection for the artistically inclined, but I like to think there’s some hope in there too, a bit of peaceful appreciation that a lost flame has found happiness. Many people in the band have played wedding gigs and I joke that it’s my dream to play She’s Getting Married as folks walk down the aisle – I wouldn’t actually recommend this to anyone tying the knot, but if the opportunity were to arise, I wouldn’t say no.” 

“I wrote this song on a tiny keyboard during a thunderstorm while wondering whether to go out to a show. It’s a conversation with a lover, but also a conversation with the self; it’s about looking for justification to keep going when there are so many reasons to stop. It was a real pleasure to get to heavily feature my bandmate John Cushing on this one too – he plays trombone and sings backing vocals, and we’ve been singing, playing our horns, and geeking out about Brian Wilson for many years.“

“Americans love to talk about freedom, but sometimes I wonder where the line is between freedom and solipsism. Sometimes it’s possible to be so narrow-minded in a quest for freedom – be it artistic, political, you name it – that you forget your own impact on your community. I’ve been there, people in my life have been there.”

His Mixtape:

Superchunk – Hello Hawk

This album was recommended to me by an old friend, Boston recording whiz Elio DeLuca, and I found myself listening to this particular song over and over while finishing the lyrics for the new record. I became obsessed with the combination of the band’s crunchy riffs with Jim O’Rourke’s lush arrangements, and that contrast became a guiding light for my own project. This song has everything, from weird bubbly textures on the chorus to a double whammy of epic guitar solo and soaring strings. A real pick-me-up of a sad song.

St. Vincent – The Strangers

Every era of St. Vincent is fun in its own way, but I especially love her first couple records and their immaculate woodwinds. This one is my favorite; it’s dreamy, romantic, and scary, too. Like Superchunk, it offers a good reminder that pretty music can benefit from some noise.

 

Jason Moran – Spoken in Two (Tear)

This is one of the most breathtaking pieces of solo piano music I’ve ever heard. Jason Moran is a jazz musician (and an old teacher of mine), but he is influenced by everyone from Cecil Taylor to Kurt Weill to Brian Wilson, and his work often appears in art gallery spaces as well as music clubs. His open-mindedness, unmistakable touch on the instrument, and unmatched sense of harmony are huge inspirations for me.

The Beach Boys – Meant For You

A perfect little poem. Not my favorite Beach Boys song, but it’s got some of Mike Love’s best vocals, and I think a lot about his gentle delivery when I attempt to sing.

Cuddle Magic – Anything

Cuddle Magic rarely performs, but this all-star crew of Brooklyn songwriters is never to be missed. This whole album, recorded live in an old bathroom, is full of delicately arranged art-pop gems; this is the emotionally devastating closer. I look up to them a lot as former music-school kids with horns in their band who are obsessed with crafting great melodies.

Paul McCartney – Jenny Wren

That fact that Paul wrote something this inventive and devastating at age 62 should be an inspiration to us all. I hope I can keep challenging myself like he has.

 

Allegra Krieger – Come

An old friend and a proud star of our little Brooklyn scene, Allegra once played sweaty loft shows on bills with us and has become heavily renowned by those in the know. She is a prolific writer, and somehow her songs always cut to the core of things while surprising me with the turns they take.

The Album:

“The protagonists of Without a Single Fight are caught between the urge to open themselves up to love or give into jadedness, the latter of which sometimes seems like the only logical reaction to a conscientious modern existence. The record consists of taut and catchy pop songwriting in the McCartney tradition, full of subtle tricks and deftly executed chordal pivots. Deceptively simple melodies travel over remote harmonic territory and surges of horns and keyboards, reemerging on the other side of the song more melancholy or world-weary. Fingerpicked guitar or piano arpeggios establish a sense of intimacy before we are borne away into affecting instrumental reveries that seem to illustrate the types of dizzying internal reflection that we are at a loss to communicate directly. What distinguishes Without a Single Fight from Peaceful Faces’s previous albums is a balance between pop discipline, uninhibited personal expression, and cinemascale ambition.”

Without A Single Fight is out now via Glamour Gowns. Look Here for more information on Peaceful Faces.