Curio pop songster Gregory Pepper has declared his brand new seventh album will be his last. No Thanks is dubbed a funeral march full of “brooding resentment and alienation bubbling below the sprightly melodies.” That does pretty much capture the tension that makes Pepper’s creative genius so alluring. His wild imagination runs to a kind of irony-deficient version of They Might be Giants while his messages seem to invert Jack Kerouac (‘that road just leads to disappointment!’). On this new release his tunes are routinely delightful, full of whimsy and striking instrumental adornments. And, as usual, the lyrics are dark, walking a fine line between sarcasm and sincerity. If No Thanks really is the swan songs of Gregory Pepper and his Problems then the vehicle is definitely going out on a high note.
The album opens with the deceptively buoyant “No Friends.” Here you have the Pepper formula – start simple and sparse but build out from there, in this case adding Quinn Martin whistly synth lines and a chorus of voices that eventually cascade into a Beach Boys big finish. “I Just Called to Say I Hate You” opens with a riff that sounds like a variation on Nik Kershaw’s “Wouldn’t It Be Good” but with added menace. “True Crimes” has a Kirsty MacColl’s “They Don’t Know” pop simplicity going on. Pepper seldom repeats himself but “Dadda” was a stand-alone single from 2019 that reappears here. It is an expert capture of the ennui of aging. “Never Have Never Will” sounds like slow motion Fountains of Wayne. I could go on, separating the madcap (“I Shit on Your Grave”) from the brooding (“Bad City Bus Ride”), but you really have to feel your way through this emotional no-fun fair for yourself. I will single out “I Miss Drugs” as the should-be hit-single. It’s a brilliant melange of styles, stitched together with a McCartney-doing-medleys sleight-of-hand. As we head for the exits Pepper lobs one final accusatory missive with the sombre, quiet “You’ll Pay.” But how? With an end to Gregory Pepper and his Problems releases? That seems an exceedingly high price.
Maybe No Thanks is a just a rumination on this particular moment and our anti-hero will rise again, perhaps in some new musical form? It is Good Friday after all. You can say ‘yes please’ to No Thanks at Camp Pepper or Fake Four Records Inc.
When last we left our hero he had just released a smash new album, 
Pepper has a McCartney-esque facility with different musical styles, ranging from music hall (“Smile”) to musicals (“Mayor’s Tomb”) to heel-clicking danceable poprock (“Do Sports”). “Whoa Dude, Whoa” has a deliciously ominous vibe, like the soundtrack to mid-1960s secret agent movie. Then he gets his wist on with lovely piano pieces like “(Isolation)” and “Finite Thing” (though the latter has a nice blow up half way through). “Recluse Abandon” really showcases Pepper as a master melodian, squeezing hooks into the tightest song spaces. The bonus tracks allow things to stretch out a bit. Particularly noteworthy is an extensively reworked version of “Funny, Eh” (originally from the Dad Year recordings), this time a little less manic and bit more ornate (in a good way).
A toy piano kicks off “Good Call,” the opening track of I Know Why You Cry. The song also features a pretty wicked violin solo. It’s all part of the unpredictable whimsy we’ve come to expect from Guelph, Ontario’s favourite son, Gregory Pepper. But the song also touches on aging, life struggles, and questions of identity, themes that appear throughout the record. I Know Why You Cry is actually a curated selection from Pepper’s mammoth “Song of the Week” exercise from 2017-18, a “long, cheeky, confessional mixtape” says Pepper that produced 52 tracks of sometimes undisciplined, often manic melody. Amid the chaos of delivering a new song each week Pepper also grappled with classic transitional life events like losing a parent, having a baby, and rebuilding a kitchen. Now, almost two years later, Pepper offers up a precisely crafted distillation of the experience. And the results are good. Very good indeed.
The album’s ‘dark’ side opens rather sprightly with “Good Call,” despite a melody and march-like feel that belies its serious themes. “Bottle of Ink” is basic biography. Pepper is also an accomplished graphic artist that uses his bottle of ink to capture things that are ‘funny and sad when life is a drag.’ Then its full on into darkness, with songs exploring worry (“Worrier Spirit”), loss (“Maybe I’ll See You”), identity (“Unsolved Mystery”) and coping (“Bogus Journey”). But darkness Pepper-style is not really a downer at all. The tuba and Monty Norman Bond coda on “Worrier Spirit” cuts the dread down the size pretty effectively. Things do occasionally get somber, as on “Bogus Journey” when Pepper channels Yann Tierson in his Amélie and Goodbye, Lenin! phase. But never for too long. Case in point: the lovely situational sketch drawn out in “Sublime Sun Tattoo” where a shop song query segues into surreal speculation about Enya’s lonely castle and stalkers so obsessed they stab themselves. It takes a certain kind of wonderfully twisted creativity to deliver this stuff.
Feel free to cancel Christmas, my present came early with Gregory Pepper’s new single “I’ve Got a Bottle.” Pepper is Canada’s should-be favourite curio pop songwriter. Master of styles, piquant tunesmith, a clever with words guy, Pepper never fails to deliver the goods. But I have to say, it’s been a while – too long. Pepper took a year to write a song a week during 2017-18 while weathering the loss of his father, arrival of a baby daughter, and driving the occasional snow plow. But now the word has come down that a new album of Pepper tunes – I Know Why You Cry – will drop in the new year. I can’t wait! Seriously, waiting is not my strong point. But in the interim you have this delightful dollop of Pepper pop craftmanship. Enjoy, and get ready for a fab Pepper-stravaganza coming to this station sometime this February.
Now I know what you’re thinking. You’ve seen these sort of crazy K-tel-esque offers before and they just seem too good to be true. Oh, it all starts off nice but after a few weeks of genuinely new material the whole operation degenerates into live album outtakes and crude demo tapes. But hey, would I steer you wrong? As your poprock curator I’ve already sampled the goods and I can assure you everything has an address on quality street. The Song of the Week Club got its start July 4 with the anthemically timely “Going Back to the U.S.A.” Since then he’s produced 14 wholly new poprock gems. By special permission from the head Pepper himself, I can showcase some of this new material here to whet your appetite.
Only 14 songs into his 52 song odyssey and already the wide range of material presents too much choice. But the four songs below I think give you a sense of what Gregory Pepper is doing. The songs capture his musical dexterity, sublime lyrical creativity, and sense of fun. “Sublime Sun Tattoo” has a late 1950s, early 1960s melodrama pop sound, with a lyric devoted to exploring Enya’s possibly castle-fed loneliness. “Worrier Spirit” has very Elvis Costello melodic subtones circa Punch the Clock to my ears. I love the way the guitars charge out of the gate, only to drop out with the vocals, the great pulsing organ, and the theramin/Quinn Martin Productions sound that appears at the three-quarter mark, capped by a cool James Bond chord ending. It’s the little details that make these such melodic masterpieces! “Give Yourself a Hand” has a great swinging feel with sweetened vocals that add just a touch of light to the desperate drabness so typical of a bachelor party trip to the strip joint. “Two Speeds” showcases Pepper’s mastery of different stylistic eras, with some nice Merseybeat touches, particularly the guitar riff and the overall song structure. I gotta stop here or I’ll give away the store.
Sublime Sun TattooWorrier SpiritGive Yourself a HandTwo Speeds
Gregory Pepper is a poprock songwriter and performer extraordinaire. He specializes in writing short, punchy, hook-filled masterpieces on bizarre and/or hilarious topics.
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