A separate Peach

Rock's most unlikely New Dylan sits on a tiny yellow chair in her parents' Westchester County day-care center, her plastic perch more suited for the playroom's clientele than for someone old enough to speak about her band's hiatus. In the living room, her parents fawn over their daughter's recent Rolling Stone photo, while in an adjoining nursery, a trio of toddlers takes an afternoon siesta so deep that even the bittersweet buzz of New York rock gossip does not crack their slumber.

Then again, the tidings divulged by Kimya Dawson, the songwriter in question, do not necessarily reach a code-red level of nap interruption. It's just been announced that Moldy Peaches, the band she coanchors with Adam Green, will be temporarily closing shop after an Irving Plaza show on Friday 1; coming after 18 hectic months that took the band from a colorful summer-camp project to international representatives of New York's antifolk scene, it's an odd time for recess. But while the band's break will allow for the requisite solo projects (Green's Garfield and Dawson's I'm Sorry that Sometimes I'm Mean were just released on Rough Trade/Sanctuary), she emphasizes that the lo-fi pranksters are far from kaput. "There have always been big breaks in Moldy Peaches," says Dawson, who moved back home in 1999 after years floating around the Northwest. "That's part of what's so cool about the band. Adam and I would go off, have separate experiences, and it would all mesh when we'd get together. It's hard to do that when we've been touring constantly, so we're taking some time off. Who knows? It could be five years."

In pop years, such a lull can push a young band into old age, but the Peaches' solo routes are encouraging. Both singers retain elements of their band's work, proffering agile lyrics that flirt with Bob Dylan's imagery, Jonathan Richman's childhood awe and, occasionally, Adam Sandler's potty-mouthed punch lines. While Green's Garfield has moments of dissonance, it is de-cidedly somber compared to the Peaches, concentrating on brooding acoustic guitar and lyrics that sound something like Leonard Cohen working blue.

"I was living with my parents, and then I went around the world with Moldy Peaches," says Green, who was 19 when the group's debut came out last year. "So it's weird going out on my own. My solo record is more introspective than the band, which was basically about what happens when you get two friends together in a room."

The jump to a solo career may be more extreme for 29-year-old Dawson, who initially became acquainted with Green not as his bandmate but as his baby-sitter and claims to be "shaking and scared" every time she plays live. Completed in 2000, just months after Dawson first picked up the guitar, her solo debut merely scratches the surface of her songwriting faculty. These abilities are better displayed on a pair of more recent albums that she leaks to the world through an unprecedented distribution scheme. "I'm a sucker for online diaries," Dawson says. "I'm always coming across these troubled teenage girls who seem to be in a place where I once was. I write to them and ask, 'Can I send you a CD?' And they're like, 'Who are you? Why are you sending me this?'"

The troubled teens are in for a jolt. Dawson's songs—mostly recorded solo, but occasionally with singing day-care kids—display an impressively broad aptitude for modern wordplay. As with many current writers, she sometimes employs pop-culture references as a crutch, but when Dawson's lyrical deluge tilts toward crossword-puzzle surrealism ("This isn't a come-on, but come on let's face it / The come on your face is really just mayonnaise"), it taps a rare, dreamlike state that brings to mind the saturated verbal games of Blonde on Blonde.

The playfulness of both Peaches' words bears the hallmarks of their irreverent postfolkie scene, which gets its own compilation in the new, Moldy Peaches–curated Antifolk Vol. 1 (Rough Trade/Sanctuary). "Our audience applauds cool lyrics as others might guitar leads," says Lach, ringleader of the scene that sets up shop at the Sidewalk Café. "Adam's and Kimya's lyrics combine traditional confessionals with the humor and rebellion of punk."

Of course, rebellion manifests itself in funky ways. As Dawson explains, while carpooling a nine-year-old from bus stop to day care, "One kid's mother complained because [my songs] involve peeing and pooing. She thought that was inappropriate. I, on the other hand, always think peeing and pooing is appropriate!"