Intuition

Issued in 1977, Caroline Peyton’s sophomore album is a schizophrenic time capsule of folk’s coked-out overdose. Jazz-disco table dancing gives way to electric hillbilly bluez and Boone’s Farm-soaked cocktail napkin torch songs before settling heavily down into the canyon. At the time of its release, Rolling Stone called Intuition a “near state-of-the-art album by a pop female vocalist,” prompting Arista’s Clive Davis to take a sniff, and pass after pianist Mark Gray insulted him for not being hip enough to even understand the music. He wasn’t wrong.

This expanded edition includes dozens of photos and two studio outtakes, but the real gold lies in the five demos recorded for Curb Records in 1979. Straightforwardly arranged, pristinely picked, and gorgeously sung, these demos find Peyton off the junk and out of the commune, marking the end of an incredible renaissance for not only Bloomington, but folk as a whole.