B-Side Guys

Twenty years disappeared between bands. Billy Peake spent them being what he calls “a fairly responsible adult”—raising a family, building a creative career outside music, watching the world through a lens of accumulated distance. Then attic demos during pandemic isolation became Manic Waves, a solo album the 49-year-old Columbus, Ohio veteran describes as something “literally no one asked for.” That self-deprecating framing undersells what he’s actually accomplished: fuzz-drenched college rock shot through with New Wave shimmer, raw and cool in ways that twenty years away from constant gigging paradoxically enabled rather than diminished.

Peake’s credentials run deep—Miranda Sound shared stages with Nada Surf, The Wrens, and The Posies, earning a Lollapalooza slot in 2003 and releasing the J Robbins-produced Western Reserve before amicably disbanding in 2008. Bicentennial Bear followed, two albums of power pop before that wound down in 2019. But Manic Waves benefits from the break, from writing without a band for the first time, from experimenting with bass-driven songs and lower vocals while channeling ’80s pop through distorted lens. The album he absorbed riding shotgun in his cousin’s canary yellow ’72 Pontiac LeMans at age eight—The Cars, Supertramp, Cheap Trick—filters through his college radio education at Bowling Green State University, where he discovered Shudder to Think, Veruca Salt, and spent an entire summer 1997 listening to OK Computer five times daily as music director.

“Go Back to Where You Came From” opens the album confronting white male privilege directly. The track establishes Manic Waves‘ willingness to address uncomfortable subjects through accessible rock frameworks, balancing rage against hooks catchy enough to lodge in memory despite the message’s severity. Peake’s self-described “enormous chip on my shoulder”—the same one the Afghan Whigs gave him license to channel into songwriting at 22—remains intact at 49, just focused on different targets.

“Manic Waves” follows as title track establishing the album’s sonic vocabulary. Matt Johnson (St. Vincent, Jeff Buckley) on drums and percussion alongside Alan “Honeymoon” Spurry on horns creates the foundation for Peake’s bass, keys, guitar, percussion, and vocals. The production by Mike Montgomery (Superchunk, The Breeders, Protomartyr) and Mike Peake himself, mixed by Montgomery, mastered by Sarah Register (David Bowie, Depeche Mode, Caroline Rose), achieves rare balance—intimate enough to feel handmade, polished enough to command attention. That these players agreed to contribute proves the songs earned their involvement rather than Peake calling in favors.

“Granddad was a Demon” delivers tongue-in-cheek bop that offsets the album’s heavier material. The track demonstrates Peake’s comfort with humor, his understanding that addressing difficult subjects requires dynamic variation to remain listenable. Jason Mowery on drums and percussion alongside Peake’s multi-instrumental work creates propulsive energy that prevents the album from becoming uniformly brooding.

“Inadvertent Trip” featuring Extra Special (Belle Mare) on vocals addresses what Peake describes as “dad wave pop” concerned with gummy abuse perils. The self-aware comedy here—middle-aged guy accidentally getting too high—provides necessary levity while Extra Special’s guest performance adds dimension without overwhelming Peake’s vision. The track showcases his willingness to mine his actual circumstances for material rather than pretending he’s still the person who burned through four vans with Miranda Sound.

“Little Glow” shifts into tenderness without sentimentality, demonstrating Peake’s range beyond rage and humor. The track benefits from the album’s bass-driven approach, lower vocals creating intimacy that higher register performances couldn’t achieve. Writing without a band freed Peake to explore sounds that wouldn’t have emerged from democratic collaboration or established band dynamics.

“Annie, You’re a Lightning Bolt” stands as the album’s emotional centerpiece, written for Peake’s daughter and addressing the misogyny she’ll face. Extra Special’s vocals soar here alongside Peake’s, Stephen Bidwell (Black Pumas) on drums and percussion, creating the album’s most overtly beautiful moment. The track captures parental helplessness—wanting to protect while knowing you can’t shield anyone from systemic problems—without descending into maudlin overstatement. The direct address to his daughter makes the stakes concrete, transforming abstract concern into something urgent and specific.

The album’s second half maintains momentum through tracks that balance personal reflection against cultural observation. Peake’s anxiety about social media and algorithm-chasing surfaces not in the music itself but in his relationship to releasing it—he’s paused the album multiple times questioning “what’s the goddamn point?” Yet beneath that self-deprecation sits genuine confidence in the work: “I really think I’ve captured something special here.” That tension between belief in the art and exhaustion with the promotional machinery shapes how Manic Waves functions. This is music made because he needed to make it, not because industry infrastructure demanded it or audience expectations required it.

“There’s not a punk in the universe…” closes the album with title suggesting both defiance and acceptance. After tracks addressing privilege, parenting, politics, and personal history, this final statement acknowledges that punk rock as youthful rebellion eventually becomes something different—not abandoned but transformed by the reality that you’re aging into the establishment you once opposed. Peake recognizes the paradox without resolving it, which feels more honest than pretending 49-year-old fathers retain the same relationship to resistance they had at 22.

Manic Waves proves that extended breaks don’t necessarily diminish artistic capacity—sometimes they provide the distance required to make something genuinely raw rather than just technically accomplished. Peake’s twenty years away from constant band activity gave him different subjects to address, different sounds to explore, different collaborators to engage. The result feels vital in ways that another Miranda Sound or Bicentennial Bear album probably wouldn’t have—not because those bands lacked quality but because this album required the specific circumstances that created it. Middle-aged guy from Ohio spent two decades being responsible, then made the solo album no one requested but some will genuinely need. The minor miracle isn’t that he convinced people who’ve worked with Bowie and St. Vincent to help him—it’s that the album justifies their involvement.