by Emmanuel Castillo (@thebruiseonwe)
Perennial’s progression is a joy to watch on multiple levels: on the musical side, they keep delivering on an ethos of intelligent, danceable, and high energy punk, but on an aesthetic level, the creative rush reminds you how much fun it’s supposed to be in a band. The constant tinkering of their songs gives the impression of a restless band always reaching for something better than the last time, and in reworking an older batch of songs on The Leaves of Autumn Symmetry, they concede that the best that you’re capable of at any given moment is a shifting target. Indeed, there’s something post-modern to the approach to the EP — if the ideal pop song can mix familiarity with surprise, Perennial take that to its next logical conclusion by having you familiar with the form but not necessarily the presentation, an approach surely informed by jazz without being overly precious about high-brow pretensions. Instead of sprawling out in search of new transcendence, Perennial decide to concentrate the presentation to lethal doses of speed and precision, every wrinkle presenting a new opportunity to land it big and every sharpened hook a chance to reel in newcomers.
The shift in focus is immediately apparent in the opener/title track “The Leaves of Autumn Symmetry,” there’s the usual promise of a raucous time signaled by the feedbacking guitars, but they’re played atop a menagerie of overlapping voices. Momentary psychedelia gives way to a kick in the face in the form of a relentlessly stabbing riff. What sounds like a four on the floor drumbeat is used to excellent effect by Wil Mulhern to smooth out the transitions as he subdivides and elongates the beat with jaw dropping subtlety. The intensity starts high, but thankfully this isn’t a band that finds intensity and fun to be mutually exclusive. They retain their sense of playfulness, like the synth that sort of sounds like a slide whistle that crashes through the song with no regards to the sonic arrangement, an attention-grabbing moment before nailing down the riff in your memory once and for all.
This penchant for surprising sounds keeps each of the songs engaging by blurring the lines of the kind of recording it is. When Chad Jewett scrapes and plucks the strings at the bridge on “Fauves,” the effect is less abrasive than it is stimulating, the metallic tones of the guitar having the timbre of a gentle pop on one side of your headphones amidst the chaos and noise of the track. It’s something you can feasibly imagine him doing in a live setting, but it’s been repurposed as something more abstract than the injection of energy it might be in a live setting. It comes off as a reconsideration of elements whose functions or pleasures may have eluded you the first time around when you couldn’t hear them as well, or a suggestion to come to these elements with a new understanding of the sonic collaging they do. It’s the sort of breathless free association the band inspires. They’re driven by ideas and they’ve found out how to tease out every angle on them without compromising any of their sensibilities or having their creativity bogged down by either their own influences or the norms of the DIY scene they operate in.
“Hippolyta!” feels like it could have inspired the entire project, despite not being the title track; there are few changes to the arrangement and aside from the fidelity it resembles the original version pretty closely. The effect of the rerecording is pretty staggering though — immediately, the programmed kick drum that opens the track puts it in a different realm than the original, less basement rave-up and more club banger, while also being an immersive headphones listen. There are a wide range of textures that, when played appropriately loud, remind you that sound is a physical sensation and not just an aural hallucination. When Chelsey Hahn and Chad Jewett invoke the title in unison, the texture of their voices against each other feels like it conveys more than simply singing in harmony could. The programmed kick into the real kick into a fuzzed out synth-bass feels practically orchestral in its arrangement, equally impressive for the economy of movement as it is for being uncluttered and focused in each new sensation.
It feels deliberate that the title in its original and inverted forms imply the passage of time and the joy in cycles, in repeating something enough that you can anticipate your favorite part. The sequence of the EP mimics that of the source LP, aside from "The Leaves of Autumn Symmetry" having been promoted to opener; a collage of the past to create new futures and memories. The EP was created as a headphones experience, but like so much of what Perennial does, it ends up being an invitation — to their shows, to recontextualize things until they’re interesting again, to engage with what you love as deeply as possible. The thesis is the same as it ever was, a challenge to create, and it’s right there on the first track: “make me new.” Perennial want the music to facilitate connection, and they take the time to make sure every swing is a clean hit.