Denmark’s Thomas Charlie Pedersen’s dazzling songwriting skill covers all the bases. His fifteen song release Employees Must Wash Hands always returns, in the end, to a core neo-folk sound, but there are so many digressions along the way that I come away from hearing this album for the first time convinced there’s little he cannot do. He’s made a name for himself as a musician magician capable of pulling an assortment of rabbits out of his creative hat, most famously as a member, with his brother, of the band Vinyl Floor. He’s been recording and performing solo for some time now and his imagination appears boundless.
The ambitious new album makes that abundantly clear. He opens with the irresistible pop charms of “Yesterdays and Silly Ways”, clearly referencing The Beatles’ effervescent pop touch, but never beholden to it. The style seems to come to him as natural as breathing and the top notch vocal harmonies are a definite highlight for me. “Slow Passage” is another early jewel in his crown and a lyrical highlight as well. His ability to weave multiple instruments together in a seamless tapestry of sound sets him apart from peers and contemporaries alike.
“Coarse Rasp of Yore” falls cleanly within his folk music wheelhouse with shimmering acoustic guitar and more of the gorgeous vocal harmonies that distinguish so much of this record. It isn’t a solo performance, though the spotlight falls squarely on him, but he doesn’t follow the typical template of kicking things off solo and then keeping a consistent band presence as the song develops. He prefers to bob and weave, keeping listeners on their toes, never knowing quite what to expect next.
“You Can’t Have It Both Ways” leans on his pop songwriting strengths once again. It boasts arguably the album’s strongest chorus and his dramatic, yet likeable vocal helps double down on the track’s clear strengths. “Tremble and Reel” is one of the best solo turns he has on the release, a piano ballad rife with his distinct personality. Experienced music listeners will have an immediate frame of reference for everything he does, but one of the remarkable things about Pedersen’s talent is how he shows us the familiar in unfamiliar personalized ways.
One of the most audacious outings is the later track “Organ Prayer (in E Flat)”. He isn’t afraid to pull listeners outside their comfort zone and few things show that more than building a track around a church pipe organ. As experiments go, it’s a stirring success, in part because of its unadulterated novelty, but largely because he pairs it with a compelling vocal melody. The final audacious turn, however, comes with the closer. “Stagnant Pools of Sorrow” is a moving piano instrumental fleshed out with equally emotional strings and it has the effect of a slowly falling leaf bringing the album to an end. Thomas Charlie Pedersen’s Employees Must Wash Hands is a rare release that you can say, with a straight face, has something for everyone.
Chadwick Easton