The Moldy Peaches
Origin Story: 1994-1999
ORG MUSIC
Right before the glamorous, amorous, post-punk likes of The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and their ilk began taking over New York’s boroughs, the grungy (actual grunge, not Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains), scroungy likes of Kimya Dawson and Adam Green were busy creating their own lo-fi revolution of smart-assed, punky, funky folk. This self-proclaimed anti-folk outfit The Moldy Peaches made their own sloppy underground noise and dippy, dressed-up (or -down) scene, signed with Rough Trade, and launched to fame with the placement of their spunky "Anyone Else But You" in Diablo Cody/Jason Reitman’s indie-flick hit Juno. It was a fun time for spiky folk, for sure, even if a lot of people hated the duo—and there really was a rush of spite and bile put toward Moldy Peaches at the start. Fuck the haters. Moldy Peaches ruled.
Going back before their Rough Trade signing, Origin Story captures the slapdash yelping musicality and rickety, raucous fun of two kids feeling their way through their guitars (Green had just learned to play, if even) and their words (Dawson was a burgeoning poet and slam queen) while guessing at their silly talents to come. The package features raw, live tracks that sound happily incomplete (“On Top,” “Lil Bunny Foo Foo”) and rawer record “re-enactments” of MP tunes and poems that are as gloriously dated as they are heroically slimy (“I Wish I Was Ben Lee,” “Ode to Girls Who Write Odes to Kurt Cobain”). Like the Beasties or the Fugs at their start, the more primal and naïve the tracks that Dawson and Green made at their start—the dusty intro “Moldy Peaches in Da House,” or the oddly mature “Ugly Child”—the better.
Origin Story is a snapshot of a moment that people didn’t appreciate when it first played out. Take it all in, and love it now for all its mold and peachiness.
