B-Side Guys

Maps fail us. Coordinates pinpoint locations but never capture what it means to inhabit space, to carry places within us long after leaving them. On “Peaks Island and Other Places,” Little Champion’s Dustin Goldklang traverses emotional topography with the precision of a cartographer and the heart of a wanderer who knows that every journey is internal as much as external.

Recorded in a makeshift Asheville home studio, this sophomore effort expands significantly on the sonic palette of Goldklang’s debut “Curiosity” while maintaining the DIY ethos that makes his work feel like a handwritten letter in an age of templated texts. Clocking in at a concise 32 minutes across 12 tracks, the album creates a vivid travelogue that never overstays its welcome.

Opening track “Peaks Island Ferry” immediately establishes both geographic specificity and universal emotional resonance. Water sounds and distant foghorns create atmospheric texture beneath acoustic guitar before synthesizers wash across the arrangement like incoming tide. Goldklang’s voice—slightly nasal but disarmingly sincere—delivers lines that transform Maine’s island community into metaphor for all places that exist suspended between mainland certainty and oceanic possibility.

“Drive” shifts gears abruptly, its motorik beat and distorted guitars capturing the hypnotic rhythm of highway travel. Here, Goldklang demonstrates his gift for transmuting mundane experience into meaning, finding existential insight in the white lines disappearing beneath tires. The production maintains bedroom intimacy despite increased instrumental density, as if you’re hearing these revelations through the thin wall separating you from a particularly thoughtful neighbor.

By the album’s third track, “Half Moon Bae,” a more nuanced picture of Goldklang’s songcraft emerges. His ability to pivot between fragile folk and caffeinated power-pop recalls early Death Cab for Cutie, though filtered through distinctly different influences. The percussion—a mix of live drums and programmed beats—creates productive tension between organic and electronic elements, embodying the album’s recurring theme of finding humanity within increasingly mediated experiences.

“Suburbs” arrives as perhaps the collection’s standout track, with lyrics that transform cookie-cutter developments into emotional landscapes of profound depth. When Goldklang sings about “cul-de-sacs of memory,” he manages to avoid pretension through sheer conviction. The arrangement builds methodically, adding layers that mirror how meaning accumulates in even the most seemingly characterless places.

The album’s middle section explores increasingly abstract territories. “Overpass” and “Hall Tree” form a complementary pair—the former examining liminal spaces we pass through without noticing, the latter finding profound meaning in overlooked domestic objects. Both demonstrate Goldklang’s gift for magnifying small moments until they reveal unexpected significance, a quality he shares with Jonathan Richman despite their different stylistic approaches.

“The Other Side of Town” marks the album’s most explicit engagement with class and geography, examining how physical distance often reflects social stratification. Here, Goldklang’s earlier work in the folk-punk scene resurfaces in his direct, unvarnished lyrics, though delivered with newfound compositional sophistication.

The collection’s most experimental moment arrives with “Dinosaurs, Etc.,” where Goldklang processes grief through paleontological metaphor, superimposing personal loss against evolutionary time scales. The production incorporates field recordings and unexpected sampling that recalls Phil Elverum’s work as Mount Eerie, though with decidedly different emotional coloring.

“Like the Earth is Flat” showcases Goldklang’s understated humor, using flat-earth conspiracy theories as jumping-off point for examining all the improbable things we choose to believe about ourselves and others. The buoyant pop arrangement creates ironic counterpoint to lyrics exploring self-deception.

As the album approaches conclusion, “Rustling” and “Kids in the NW” form another thematic pairing—the former capturing the small sounds that populate solitude, the latter examining community through Pacific Northwest imagery despite Goldklang’s Asheville residence. This geographic dislocation perfectly encapsulates the album’s central premise: that places exist within us as much as we exist within them.

Closing track “So Long” functions as both farewell and philosophical statement. Over fingerpicked guitar and subtle electronics, Goldklang reflects on impermanence with language that transforms departure into possibility rather than mere ending. The sparse arrangement allows his unadorned vocals center stage, creating the album’s most intimate moment precisely when discussing separation.

Throughout “Peaks Island and Other Places,” Goldklang demonstrates remarkable growth as songwriter, producer, and conceptual artist. By filtering bedroom pop, DIY punk, and folk traditions through his distinctive sensibility, he’s created something that honors its influences while establishing its own territory on the musical landscape. In mapping his emotional geography, he’s provided listeners with coordinates to better navigate their own.