Interview Peter Raffoul
We had the pleasure of interviewing Peter Raffoul over Zoom video!
For Nashville-based singer/songwriter Peter Raffoul, songs often emerge late into the night, at an hour when inhibitions fall away and the most essential truths are laid bare. With a lyrical sensibility that merges intimate confession and boldly detailed storytelling, the Canada-born artist opens up about anxiety and isolation and the more complicated aspects of human connection, elegantly matching his moody intensity with a mercurial form of alt-rock/folk. Made with producers Owen Lewis (Old Sea Brigade, Maddie Medley) and Henry Brill (Phantogram, Jack Garratt), Raffoul\u2019s debut body of work reveals his undeniable gift for transforming pain into beauty\u2014an element endlessly magnified by the pure warmth and power of his voice.
Originally from the small Ontario town of Leamington, Raffoul first embraced his stream-of-consciousness approach to songwriting in his late teens, when he spent countless hours teasing out songs in the clubhouse-like shed behind his family\u2019s home. As the product of a highly musical family\u2014his father Jody has played in rock bands for over three decades, his brother Billy is singer/songwriter signed to Interscope\u2014Raffoul grew up immersed in the timeless records of the Beatles and Led Zeppelin and began exploring his own musicality by taking up piano at 17. \u201cThe music I\u2019m making today really comes from all that time I spent in the shed over the years,\u201d notes Raffoul, now 27. \u201cIt was always a world away from everything, where I could mess around with songs on this little keyboard and figure out how to put chords and melodies to all the lyrics I had in my head.\u201d Before long, he\u2019d added guitar to his repertoire and created a song called \u201cMaybe I Do,\u201d a bittersweet but radiant track slated for his forthcoming debut EP. \u201cI was trying to paint a picture of the start of a relationship where the other person seems so perfect, you\u2019re almost waiting for something to go wrong,\u201d says Raffoul. \u201cIt felt melancholy and hopeful at the same time, and once I found that contrast I knew I wanted to keep writing more songs in that vein.\u201d
All throughout his debut, Raffoul builds a hypnotic tension between that raw emotionality and a wildly unpredictable sound informed by everything from late-\u201980s college rock to left-of-center hip-hop to the Beatles\u2019 excursions into dreamy psychedelia. Among the EP\u2019s standout tracks are his debut single \u201cFucked Up Together\u201d: a gorgeously stripped-back piece centered on his delicate piano work, soulful vocals, and lyrics that speak to a deep longing to be understood. On \u201cCigarette Holes,\u201d he spins a piercingly honest portrait of emotional chaos, upending the song\u2019s heavy-hearted mood with brightly uptempo rhythms. Meanwhile, \u201cBad for Me\u201d brings potent beats and prismatic textures to an unflinching meditation on cycles of self-destruction. \u201cWhen you\u2019re going through a breakup or any other hard time in life, sometimes it feels easier to do things that are bad for you, as a way to numb yourself,\u201d says Raffoul, who co-wrote \u201cBad for Me\u201d with Connor Thuotte and Kate York (Lady A, Caitlyn Smith). \u201cWe started riffing on that idea and Connor played a very simple chord progression on this junky little guitar he\u2019d gotten for $5 at a yard sale, which we used on the final version\u2014it was this magical moment where everything just came together so naturally.\u201d
True to the playful spontaneity and DIY spirit of its creation, Raffoul\u2019s debut EP offers up plenty of idiosyncratic moments that intensify the unbridled energy of each track. To that end, the chorus to the gloriously frenetic \u201cI Just Want to Be OK\u201d takes the form of a cathartic outburst, a component he improvised in co-writing the song with his brother. And on \u201cCall Me,\u201d Raffoul shares an epic heart-on-sleeve ballad threaded with hauntingly stark and spellbinding piano melodies. \u201cI wrote that song late at night in a hotel room and made a demo where the piano sounded super-thin, almost like it was playing through a truck driver\u2019s transistor radio,\u201d he recalls. \u201cWhen we worked on it in the studio, we ended up manipulating the piano sound so that you can still really feel that loneliness of the original, which is one of the things that makes that song so special to me.\u201d
With the release of his first batch of material, Raffoul hopes that others might find solace in his unfiltered yet finely crafted outpouring. \u201cMost of these songs are about admitting that things are far from perfect, but to me there\u2019s hopefulness in that,\u201d he says. \u201cI think it\u2019s possible to find comfort in being uncomfortable, as long as you know you\u2019re not the only one who doesn\u2019t have it all figured it out. I want to let people that it\u2019s okay to be happy and sad at the same time\u2014and that instead of trying to ignore those uncomfortable feelings, we should try to make the most of them.\u201d
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