by Emmanuel Castillo
In the Midnight Hour is easily CT post-hardcore band Perennial’s most fully realized offering in a discography getting to be full of high concept, high energy punk rippers. They retain everything that made them great on The Symmetry of Autumn Leaves – incendiary performances, huge sounding riffs with teeth, an interest in the studio – and tightened it up to surgical precision. Wil Mulhern puts in a heroic performance, imbuing each drum pattern with uncanny catchiness and energy while maintaining metronomic efficiency. Faster tempos are met with more economical, intelligent musicianship across the board, taking a single riff and transforming it with each repetition as needed to convey a new emotion (they employ this technique so well that when Chelsey Hahn shouts “cut up the pattern!” it sounds like their ethos in miniature).
Each idea is connected through tense, sinewy guitar figures emphasizing the kinetic energy of the songs — when the string bends come in through the heavy parts of “Food for the Hornets,” it doesn’t take much to imagine the strangled guitar and someone out for blood when you hear the frets scrape as the strings stretch. The arrangements of each of the songs is also built to maximize the punch of new elements, like the gentle, chiming synths that follow the metallic friction at the end of the track, the wash of organ that punctuates “Soliloquy for Neal Perry,” or the cowbell helping to drive the rhythm in “Lauren Bacall in Blue.”
Perennial’s brevity and dynamic sophistication ensure that the variations on a theme approach to songwriting stays fresh, direct, and sharp as they blow through song after song; when they slow down, they do so to accommodate free-form arrangements that might spiral into Eno-esque soundscapes, walking bass lines, or fuzzy backwards guitar — an evolution of the studio as instrument approach they explored on The Symmetry of Autumn Leaves. After brushing off some of the basement scuzz of their previous LP, the results are practically hi-fi in comparison, allowing the details to shine through and properly dazzle the audience. It parallels and heightens what seems to be their favorite parts of being a band between the live-wire entertainers meant to keep the audience in constant movement and the collagist-auteurs in a lineage with some of the art that shaped them (the vibrant visuals of their records, often influenced by classic jazz LP covers or French New Wave movie posters, only seem more striking after you hear how hard the record goes).
They’d still be one of the most kick ass bands on Dischord or Jade Tree in their hey-days, but the rawness and sincerity is balanced by arty obfuscation in the lyrics and an anarchic sense of humor in the presentation. Dialing back the Fugazi (only slightly) and adding healthy doses of Revolver worship and B-52’s smirk to their squall are welcome shake ups, but the secret sauce seems to be the ghost of the white belt someone in Perennial must have owned. Chad Jewett and Chelsey Hahn are in excellent form here vocally, and the sassy slant to their voice in moments like Hahn’s delivery of the first verse of “Perennial in a Haunted House,” only serve to make the choruses more explosive when they adopt a throat shredding scream in unison.
As a band, they were already adept at the crowd pleasing rager and in the gap between records they’ve learned to hit those emotional beats with a boxer’s skill. In indulging the artier, extra-musical qualities, they’ve given each riff an elevated identity. Perennial have pulled the curtains aside at the house show and lightened the room up a bit, revealing more of the details of their world without losing the urgency that made you miss some of those details in the raw energy of before — it’s the ideal follow up.