Album Review: Gretchen Peters – Burnt Toast & Offerings

Gretchen Peters’ latest, Burnt Toast & Offerings, is a quiet and introspective collection of precisely-crafted songs that is remarkably detached from the usual heavy-handed imagery and overwrought production of today’s Nashville. Seldom wasting a word, Burnt Toast showcases an unparalleled maturity of thought; these stories are smart and poignant and come together to spin a complex web of human emotion.

There are so many drop-your-jaw-amazing lyrics on this record that it’s near impossible to pick just a few to hold up here as examples. “Open up your suitcase and show me what you got/I don’t need a new religion, I don’t need no pans or pots/But your little ritual might entertain me,” Peters’ sings on “Lady Of The House,” unquestionably one of the album’s highlights. Then there’s “Jezebel,” which tells the other side of the story, and “Breakfast At Our House,” a dark, realist take on love actualized. There simply is not enough room in this review to pull out every noteworthy passage–which speaks to how excellent this album really is.

And it is excellent. I’m not sure there is a songwriter alive today (in any genre) who understands narrative tone as well as Peters does–as evidenced by a song like “Sunday Morning (Up And Down My Street),” which not only describes a breezy Sunday morning (although it does so in vivid detail), but sounds and feels like one, too.

Burnt Toast & Offerings does tend to wear on a bit, though, perhaps lingering for too long in its mellow aesthetic, and the album lacks any truly edgy moments; there is nothing here with the driving power of “Independence Day,” (which she wrote), or the gritty desperation evident in Peters’ cover of Steve Earle’s “I Ain’t Ever Satisfied” (from her 1996 album The Secret of Life). This fact causes the album’s material to bleed together somewhat, despite its quality.

Still, this is a welcome offering for those of us who sometimes wonder where all the storytellers have gone, and it deserves a listen from anyone who appreciates great songwriting.