Oh Pep!’s incredible debut album Stadium Cake is out today through Barely Dressed Records / Remote Control – and already it’s been the subject of praise around the world.
Village Voice pronounced it “fast, boisterous and baroque, a statement of intent that highlights the groups ambition to be more than just a folk act,” while Rolling Stone exclaimed that it was “faultless folk-rock”.
Stadium Cake showcases the uniquely compelling collaboration between Olivia Hally and Pepita Emmerichs, who were drawn together back in high-school by virtuosic musicianship and a shared love of songwriting without boundaries.
Hally and Emmerichs decamped to the wilds of Halifax, Nova Scotia to record the album with producer Daniel Ledwell. They celebrated the culmination of those sessions by swimming across the stunning Lake Echo, which neighbours the studio.
“One thing Dan won’t let you do in a studio is overthink, which is beautiful because it made it really fun and creative,” Hally says. They wanted to be completely open to new ideas and approaches, and to not confine themselves to preconceived notions of how the music should be made. The result sees them take the folk music of their previous EP’s to some truly breathtaking sonic heights on the new record.
That Emmerichs and Hally were able to create a record of such inventiveness and imagination with not much more than folk instruments led Paste Magazine to dub the album “truly miraculous”. A sense of tension and release stitches together the lyrical tapestry of Stadium Cake. It’s heard in the chorus of lead single ‘Doctor Doctor’ “I know what I want and it’s not what I need” and in the textured crescendos of ‘Tea, Milk and Honey.’
