Peter Gill has quietly become one of the most fascinating songwriters out there. With 2nd Grade, he’s taken power pop in bold, unexpected directions—turning short songs into vivid postcards. But with inspiration clearly spilling beyond the borders of that project (or what fans might expect from it), Gill launched WPTR to explore another side of his creative world.
Redness & Swelling at the Injection Site—an 18-track debut with exactly the awesome kind of title Gill has a way of dreaming up—is a lo-fi, warped pop fever dream. It shares DNA with 2nd Grade (concise song structures, restless ideas, a lo-fi aesthetic), but it’s more abstract, and more unhinged. You’ll hear echoes of Bill Fox, Sufjan Stevens, and Daniel Johnston, but Gill mostly sounds like himself: a restless builder of miniature worlds “populated by chess grandmasters, Italian filmmakers, wartime writers, and confused celebrity ghosts.”
Where 2nd Grade might be power pop for introverts, WPTR fully unleashes Gill’s experimental side. This debut is less a manicured lawn, more a wild garden—overgrown, uneven, buzzing with life. Every bend reveals something unexpected, and it’s all the more beautiful for its lack of symmetry.
The album is out now on Tape at Lame-O Records. I’m still unpacking it.
Add to wantlist: Bandcamp