Ladies Love Cool Peter

Peter Von Poehl - Going To Where The Tea Trees Are

Here's a sweet, sweet slice of excellent soft pop from an elusive young Swede called Peter Von Poehl.

With aspirations to be a musician, Von Poehl moved around quite a bit (Austria, Spain, Denmark, Venezuela), before settling for a while in Paris, where he apprenticed in the Tricatel studio and did some work with Bertrand Burgalat. According to his bio, he later started a project there called Kang, but abandoned it. More recently, he has moved to Berlin and has been writing and recording on his own. This song was originally released on 7" by Graeferecordings (a label he started with Florian Horwath) as a taste of his upcoming full-length. According to Peter's website, the album is to be called Mummenschanz (German for disguise or masquerade), though that is probably a working title.

I've heard a handful of the songs that will be on the album and I can say Von Poehl makes really great tunes - it is subtle, well crafted pop music (think Maximilian Hecker or maybe even Sufjan Stevens), using sweet guitars, orchestration, saxomophone, and his great voice, sometimes multi-tracked, sometimes solo - its gorgeous stuff, and the ladies will love him. Trust me. Play this song for your girlfriend or wife or whatever, and see if you don't end up making out by the end of it. Its like that.

Ah, and one of the bonuses of all this is that Peter has recently signed to our friends over at Moshi Moshi Records, so that upcoming album (slated for early 2006) should be appearing in finer record stores all over the place. There are probably still a few copies left of the 7" this song is on, so swing by the shop on his website to grab a copy. Also, he's been playing a lot of shows recently too, in Germany, the UK, France, and Scandanavia, (though there's no future dates listed on his site) so keep your eyes peeled for more info on this guy.