Red Alert

Pepi Ginsberg is back in town.

by A.D. Amorosi

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Pepi Ginsberg is possibly the most vexingly audacious new singing-songwriting sort to haunt the boundaries of the genre. She's done it with her deep trilling flutter of a voice, a storytelling sense of mirth, and music that no matter how spare or full sounds as if it's been crinkled in her hand, tossed into a paper bag and kicked skyward. The Brooklyn-to-West Philly-and-back arriviste has a lovely story, but there's nothing like Pepi's present, the one heard on the gorgeously splintered Red.

City Paper: What's behind naming your 2006 self-released CD Orange Juice: Stephanie/Stephanie?

Pepi Ginsberg: Man, the whole reasoning? I liked how those words sat together. I'd taken classes in language poetry. It felt like it offered a "fuck you, I'm 22" freedom. I was so new to songwriting and was under the impression I could use and twist language extremely and still communicate it in a real, emotional way — and maybe now and again I got away with it. I feel like I was that kid in school who writes a poem and defends it by saying, "You just don't get it." And the rest of the class shrugs and is like, "Yeah, cause it doesn't make sense." Still, I'm glad I went there. These days I'm into making more sense while hopefully keeping that sense of lyrical recklessness intact, at least sometimes.

CP: I won't pretend to know absolutely every word you're singing, what with that mysterioso delivery method you got going. What did you want to make Red, lyrically?

PG: I wanted to make it an adventure story and a box full of small truths. A mirror with backward reflections, somehow shadows and ditches and turrets and divots and a broken wing flying on the back of a broken-hearted bird. And an airplane and another one crossing it miles above. And a hill, a garden, a horse jump, a fallow field and a dead man, itchy sun and a village of bells. A city block, acid and dusk, and just close to being enough.

CP: What song set the tone for Red?

PG: This record was written out of order. If anything, I think the song I wrote almost last, which was "In My Bones," set the tone. I see them as being open doors to the next batch. Sometimes I forget where they came from, the circumstances. Like being driven while sitting in the back seat — can't ever find your way back to where you were taken. And I have a decent sense of direction, but in that situation, I just want to fade out and look at the trees.

CP: "Ghosts of Perdition" is my favorite song here. Why?

PG: It was a funny song — it came out of one of the first songs I ever wrote — with a different melody, just rambled, no chorus, no structure. I finished it in California. Maybe it needed to go to a different city and prove itself. It used to have lines about artificial sweeteners and a painting of burning twin buildings by an artist called Richard Artschwager. Its recording has a quality which reflects the mood of the song, a party. But a bit of that feeling of stepping outside a party and hanging out on the steps, smoking a cigarette, maybe having some deep cigarette thought.

Pepi Ginsberg with Dr. Dog and Seth Kauffman,Wed., May 28, 8 p.m., $10, Johnny Brenda's, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684, johnnybrendas.com