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Atomic Junkshot Releases Peacedale Album

By Kath Galasso on June 7, 2024

Stream the album’s latest single HERE

St. Louis-based Outlaw Country band Atomic Junkshot has released its highly-anticipated album Peacedale, which is now streaming on all major platforms.

Named for the studio in rural Connecticut where the gritty, 10-song album was cut {listen to album in full here}, the songs deftly deliver on the band’s influences ranging from southern rock to alt-country, honky-tonk to blues and straightforward rock’n’roll. Ultimately, Peacedale carries an at-times lyrically-edgy, diverse collection of Midwest-inspired narratives written by Atomic Junkshot’s lead singer and rhythm guitarist, Aaron Perlut.

“Somewhere between Lynyrd Skynyrd and Lou Reed’s Wildside, Atomic Junkshot brings out these winding guitars for an almost-twang sound but it’s slow and plodding,” comments Raised By Cassettes. “The closest sound I can really compare this with is that classic Southern rock sound, though it is not completely that.

Perlut said the band has been surprised by the early reception.

“We’ve been touched by the early reception of the album,” he said. “It’s authentic to who we are and Greg helped bring out the best in each performance.”

Produced by Greg D. Griffith—who has worked in-studio with Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls, Rachel Baiman, The Butchies, and others—the album was released May 31, 2024, and was recorded at Griffith’s Peacedale Studios in Bristol, Connecticut.

“Atomic Junkshot is the bastard love child of early-Replacements and Reba McEntire,” said Griffith, who also mixed the album. “I love that raw punk element, whether it was intended or not. I was excited to capture that as much as possible and feel like the end-product accomplishes as much.”

Perlut’s songwriting is admittedly long and wordy, taking cues from his musical heroes such as Ray Wylie Hubbard, Steve Earle, Tom Petty and Tony Joe White. His lyrical narratives often examine the offbeat, Midwestern slices of Americana that surround the band’s hometown of St. Louis.

“We feel like the songs are an embodiment of the communities we live in, the folks we spend time with and the lives we know to be true,” Perlut said.

The lead single “Dirt Roads” is a somewhat over-the-top look at Lake of the Ozarks—flush with images of three-legged-dogs, trash cluttered front yards, meth shacks and E. Coli contaminated water. The song “Kankakee” dissects the legacy of bordellos in the 1940s and ‘50s-era northern Illinois city while “Pretty Girls and Pins” focuses on an interstate exit in southern Missouri flush with four churches, a bowling alley and a strip club. At the same time, Perlut works to bring to life true-to-life portraits of people—such as “Brother Dave,” a biographical song examining former U.S. Marine and Richmond (Va.) police sniper David Naoroz, or “Gene the Auctioneer,” about a since-deceased man behind a hat Perlut was given.

Peacedale is Atomic Junkshot’s first full-length studio album following 2022’s Gun Show EP, produced by Adam “Lightnin’” Hoskins, and the band’s 2023 live record, Live from Luke’s House, produced by Lucas Jack and mastered by Mike Semple.

Atomic Junkshot’s lineup—bass guitar player Clay Mudd, percussionist Brian McCary, Markus Everblus on harmonica and lead guitar and Perlut—performed on each of the albums 10 songs. Grammy-nominated piano player Jimmy Wallace provided organ and piano while Spencer Harris contributed backing vocals.

Founded in 2018 in St. Louis, since releasing its 2022 debut EP, Gun Show, Atomic Junkshot has steadily caught the attention of Americana music fans. Critics have described the band as “twisted southern rockers” and “the honky-tonk love child of David Allan Coe and Blues Traveler;” and in reviewing a live version of the song “Dirt Roads”—a studio version of appears on Peacedale—Chadwick Easton of Melody Maker Magazine wrote “There is something pretty retro about the way they’re getting to the hook … yet I’m quite hesitant to call any part of their framework steeped in old-school cues. The approach is as classic as it gets … exclusive and original in every department.”

For more about Atomic Junkshot, visit the band’s website at AtomicJunkshot.com and sample the new Peacedale album here on Soundcloud.