Composer: Todd Snider
Label: Aimless
Release Date: 2008-10-15
Rated: NONE
Genre: Recording
Unlike other opinionated singer-songwriters (paging Conor Oberst), Todd Snider is able to maintain a balance between politically charged
recordings and tongue-in-cheek humor. In addition to the humorous title, the album cover features Snider — tied up and blindfolded — being held up by a shirtless hippie.
“Clearly, anyone who looks at the photograph can tell that I had been abducted by an international league of peace queers and forced to write protest music — you know, for their cause,” Snider says in the EP’s press notes.
However he came to write the songs, Snider delivers yet another in a long line of quality releases. From the opening “Mission Accomplished (Because You Gotta Have Faith)” to the album-closing “Is This Thing On?,” Peace Queer is an enjoyable anti-war assembly, complete with spoken word (“Is This Thing Working?”), slow-groove Americana (“The Ballad of Cape Henry”), and even a stripped-down cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son.”
