sadpeachworld, with her emo band, No Manners unplugged, celebrated the essence of radical healing through art
Albuquerque's undisputed queen of emo, and the distinguished sergeants for the cause, gave the world a noble and incendiary night of sobering human relevancy
In the psychological graveyard of hard knocks, abandonment, abuse, widespread mistrust and constant shadow-masking, all while surgically executing an accelerated booze-soaked, public self-annihilation, we often don’t sense how far below the horizon we worked criminally hard for so damn long to position ourselves.
But we can damn sure sense the bottom.
For most of us, me included, it looks something like catastrophic burnout and psychosis of a deranged mind not of our own. It’s a psychosis of the previous realm, not the one we leveled up to in our most recent expansion. It’s quite clearly, a virtual murder absent shame or warning.
The heavyweight, undisputed king of universal truths in all healing, in public eye or not, the very first and most astoundingly stupid first step is to put the damn shovel down.
Anyone who has hit the damn wall has usually done so with an absurd amount of alcohol-soaked accelerant cultivating fatal inhibitions.
Albuquerque is an accelerant.
It’s even worse if you are an emo musician.
Emo music is Albuquerque. Now. In 2024. Today folks. It may have been metal in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s, and there are hundreds of bands still today to support the cause. I don’t factor what happened here before covid, but post-pandemic, emo has the biggest draw in the greater ABQ area. Consistently. And their fans are every damn where. And they actually show up and support their favs. It’s quite astonishing to witness an entire emo culture connect on a metaphysical level, even if the human occupants don’t listen to music. Mesmerizing to have such an omnipresent brand, and platform that accurately depicts the state of western youthful minds in this backwards ass country of oppression who orchestrated the subsequent, psychological damage enmasse.
On a healing journey, emo, and most country music for that matter, has the potential to keep one stuck in their own quagmire of intricacies and cancer-like toxic attachments; a cancer that spreads outwardly, hitting the ones we love the hardest. Like Albuquerque, emo will bitch slap the listener with stone cold and brutal truth. It’s unfocused rage and often misplaced but it is certainly not irrelevant. A whole genre and demographic screaming and kicking for the stupidity and abuse to stop and yet, it gets worse, and their rage is blamed. Isn’t that weird? Funny how the traumatic, environmental pressures aren’t blamed, huh? And similar to her emo cousin, Duke City provides all humans the blank canvas to keep digging the damn hole, or to murder all previous versions of self to make way for what will infill the mystical space of questioning, curiosity, nurturing; love and acceptance of self. Otherwise known as community actualization. The only sustainable escape from one’s own spiritual grave.
Peach, and her wickedly brilliant band of force multipliers who both write and believe the message of a woman taking her power back, performed an intimate celebration of discovered abundance after she emerged to a community of open, compassionate hearts to welcome her truth that is No Manners; the vital first step before going live. The agency she brought into this world now conduits her spirit and the band behind her last night: visionaries. All of them. And I say bravo to you. To see another’s art in human suffering is love; to envision, contribute, and make it your own is noble.
With the visual weight of armageddon removed from her bathroom mirror, Peach and her Band of Acoustic Magicians as No Manners two.point.whatever, showcased to the world last night at Echoes Albuquerque that emo can evolve. And it sounds otherworldly with No Manners. And people, the fighters in the pit, the real mofos, can heal; and it looks a lot like sadpeachworld.
Peach survived both Albuquerque and emo. The cadre of brothers behind her made damn sure she celebrated proper.
Celebration is the necessary activation inside us all to keep doing the damn thing and the upstanding lads behind her deserve a silent nod from the collective shadow worker’s union. Can I get a harrumph for the band?
In closing, I normally don’t trip over fans and followers, but I write for the musician just as freely and confidently as I do for the citizen for whom I wish to reach. Last year, I conducted a very cosmic, yet alarming demographic study on live music attendance in the ABQ area, as compared to similarly-sized cities in the US and tried to keep it somewhat in the western half. No Manners, with their emo music tenure, all-in energy, and accessibility (relevancy), have amassed a fan following worthy of having done the damn thing. I don’t know who you are, but the dedicated fanbase showed up for the queen of emo.
On behalf of sadpeachworld, my own healing testimony, and several thousands before us, I assure you Peach’s return was solidified by your continued presence, and steadfast relatability in her realm. Sadly, and organically more encouraging than family and close friends, fans of the resistance who identify with the message are the public nod we need to not quit. Shout out to the fans on No Manners’ behalf.
They showed up to see her smile and we smiled with them.
Stringer