by Emmanuel Castillo (@thebruiseonwe)
Perennial know their way around both a song and an experiment, and Perennial ‘65 find them melding the two approaches. The plan: enter a time warp and imagine what it would be like to be in the Beatles’ or the Who’s shoes, in the unenviable situation of having to follow up some of your strongest material to date. In Perennial’s case, it’s last year’s excellent Art History.
The idea of the EP — writing the 15th track off Revolver — isn’t an easy one to execute. But the substance of the idea isn’t anything as trite as “beat the Beatles,” as much as “Don’t rest on your laurels.” Perennial approach the idea with the same inventiveness and infectiousness that they imbue all of their material, but the more compact form and specific constraints of Project ‘65 makes the whole project feel like a more direct statement.
The title track starts the guitar riff on a pick-up and collides with the steady tambourine, goes around twice, and is joined by hooky organ stabs and rolling drums. The drums climax in a crash that signals the vocals to kick in and the song to truly start. It’s a theatrical intro that immediately recalls Revolver’s “Taxman,” particularly in the drumbeat, and letting the energy simmer after that kind of bombast is a cool move. The rest of the song is a meditation of how much life there can be in the most familiar images, with the lyrics presenting slight anachronisms and images (hula hoops, magnetic tape, radio signals — symbols of a pre-digital era) in a way that reinforces the quaintness of the symbols. It contrasts with the paranoia embedded in lines like “the wristwatch is a microphone / this morse code is a dial tone,” presenting both psychedelic image and a grim reality.
“All Day and All of the Night” is a garage-y banger, copping a Doors-like rhythm for the riff and a Buzzcocks attitude. The sentiment of the song is the most direct flirtation that Perennial has had with the culture of pop music, eschewing their image based writing for a classic expression of forever-desire, using the form to hit the message home. In 2025, a song that gives you a verse, pre-chorus, and a chorus can feel like a welcome surprise — audiences aren’t exactly known for their patience — but when they get to the expansive middle 8 section (!), you can’t help but feel that that’s where the pay-off is. The guitar solo perfectly disrupts the song, a burst of jagged melodic energy that simmers into a quieter verse led by co-lead vocalist and organ player Chelsey Hahn.
Each remix emphasizes the danceability at the heart of Perennial’s music: Cody Votolato of the Blood Brothers adds a dub like flavor to “Tiger Technique” by layering the louder call and quieter response vocals, oscillating between the two. There’s a degree of menace to the more minimalist, bass-led moments that give the track an air of nightclub danger absent in the original song. Meanwhile, Chris Walla’s contribution is textural and melodic, keeping the skeleton of “Up-Tight” while embellishing Chad Jewett and Hahn’s vocals with a piano interlude and a range-y, freewheeling guitar solo, underlining the kinetic energy even in the controlled form of the remix.
“C is for Cubism” is the most fully-fledged in their series of art alphabet songs and the track that ties the remixes most closely to Perennial’s aesthetic. The song feels modular, each instrument in the arrangement bumps against each other in a way that implies both independent movement and lockstep rhythm, and there’s a drum machine core to the composition that shines through and holds everything together.
Perennial’s directive seems simple on the surface — write good songs, make sure people want to move to them — but they approach the task with a discipline not often seen in aggressive music, showing the evidence of the time spent honing the effect without seeming staid or boring in the final product. The rush of creativity is what animates this band, and it comes through even in their outside collaborations. Perennial ‘65 is another set of great songs from a band that knows a great song isn’t just the composition, or the chemistry, or the performance, but the synthesis of all parts.