Pegg, the project of songwriter Xander Duell, has teamed up with the legendary composer Van Dyke Parks for a new album entitled Presque Tout: Variations no. 435-514 “Baseball Season.” With the LP set to arrive on September 19, Pegg has shared a live version of Van Dyke Parks’ classic “The All Golden,” originally featured on Parks’ 1986 all-timer Song Cycle.
“Within Pegg, I’d like to think the word ‘psychedelic’ has a meaning slightly different from its expected one,” Duell shares. “For us, in addition to kaleidoscopic brain spirals and explosions of spiritual love, there is something sacred in the psychedelic. As if through the kaleidoscope, like a fly getting the big picture out of a thousand little ones, there’s hidden truth to be discovered that way, and only that way. With that framework, ‘The All Golden’ is in the running for most psychedelic song of all time. You’ll hear quintessential American phrases like ‘run-of-the-mill’ placed in what, to me, are the musical contexts the words exist to be put in. A million snippets of Americana live inside this song and thrive as they never have before and never will again.”
Presque Tout is currently available as a limited-edition 500-piece puzzle, accompanied by downloads of the project (out now), as well as a six-panel digipak CD with a four-panel insert. Presque Tout will arrive digitally September 19 via Is Not Music. Pre-order it here, and check out Pegg’s piano-and-voice rendition of “The All Golden” below.
