Peach

Peach is an amazing three-piece garage/indie band that has the "x factor" and in today's market you either have it or you don't and Peach definitely has it! Beautiful vocals on top of rockin' music makes for a good time when you see them live. Definitely a band I'm going to keep a watch on! - Maurice Holmes - River Front Radio

The question for last weekend was not, “What is there to do?”

It was, “Which of all the options should I choose to do?”

Milwaukee-based blues band Hounds Tooth was at The Club Tavern, St. Louis band Peach joined Predawn Hour and Fielder at the State Room, and the Not So Fine Arts Society held a 10-stop Super Hero pub crawl with live music and comedians.

I stopped by the State Room on Saturday at the same time as the Super Hero group crawled through. Starting a night off amid masked-avengers can only mean one thing, fun.The place started filling up with “civilians” just about the time Predawn Hour took the stage and the Super Heroes left for their next stop for the night. The crowd moved in front of the stage for the rest of Predawn Hour and stayed to dance through Fielder. Both local favorites sounded great and there was an extra energy to the performances. Maybe it was the warm weather signally summer is on the way or maybe it was just good music in a cool venue, but it was almost electric.

Melissa Roberts of Peach performing at Cicero's in St. Louis. (Submitted Photo)

Peach, the guest performers, stood up front and applauded the Quincy bands efforts and seemed to truly enjoy the show. Lead-singer and guitarist Melissa Roberts, bassist Alex Power and drummer Seth Bailey all looked great and were incredibly down-to-earth. They talked about how the music scene in Quincy was seemingly great and how they’d love to come back.

I will say that for a town our size, though, I wish that the pub crawl and the State Room show hadn’t occurred on the same evening, because the show did not have the turnout that it could have — but it happens. Quincy has a great group of music lovers, so I can only hope that next time Peach treks up this direction for a show, it will have an audience they deserve.

When Peach, the female-fronted trio, was set up for its performance, it had a ton of energy. Roberts started strumming her big red guitar that was about the size of her, and she started whipping her head around as the group put on a show. Sadly it was a bit hard to hear all of her vocals, but the sound got better as the show went on.

One onlooker said that Roberts didn’t have a small or wispy voice like some female singers. Instead, her voice was full and strong. I instantly compared her to The Gossip’s lead-singer Beth Ditto in similarity of tone and energy on stage. Ditto and Roberts voices are nowhere near identical, though, but they both have a fullness and strength that is interesting.

The most recognizable song of the set was “Chewable,” where the instruments dropped back a bit at the beginning of the song and Roberts’ lyrics could be heard clearly. Bottom line, the group is incredibly fun to watch and listen too.

To generalize their music as a genre, I do kind of agree with the band’s answer to that of “post-trash,” only because their sound is less about being perfect and more about conveying a feeling. It almost was like grungy music meets pop/R&B vocals but in an incredibly catchy and entertaining way.

I can’t wait to hear Peach again and would love to catch it with some of its hometown fans in attendance. I also could definitely see this group killing an acoustic show with their chemistry and Roberts’ piercing vocals.

All in all, another great weekend for Quincy music.

Now hopefully people can come out more and show these out-of-town bands that we truly are glad they made the trip to entertain us. - Jessica Martin - The Whig - Breakdown