Connecticut dance-punk/post-hardcore band Perennial have just released The Leaves Of Autumn Symmetry, an EP of reworked versions of five songs from their 2017 debut album The Symmetry of Autumn Leaves that also follows last year’s In the Midnight Hour. The EP was produced by TWIABP’s Chris Teti, and band member Chad Jewett describes the concept like this:
Our process was to first capture the energetic heartbeat of each of these songs, and then to immediately look for ways to make them more compelling as headphone experiences. We really took time to cut these songs up into collage material and see what new angles we could find: splashing paint on them, replacing instruments and making the whole thing a bit more modernist, a bit more impressionistic.
As you’ll see if you follow Perennial on Twitter (I mean “X”), the members are huge music lovers with a very wide variety of taste that spans the past 60 years of pop music, from the biggest artists to the depths of the underground. It’s always interesting to hear about what’s inspiring them, and today is a day that we get to do so. In conjunction with the EP’s release, Chad has made us a list of five albums that influenced it with commentary on each one, and it’s very worth reading. Stream the new EP and read on for what he had to say.
Perennial are playing release shows at Redscroll Records in Wallingford, CT tonight (9/1) with Glambat and Minus Points; Hope Fest in Salem, MA on Saturday (9/2); and Purgatory in Brooklyn on Sunday (9/3) with Bummer Camp and Labrador.
Stereolab – Dots And Loops
We listened to a ton of Stereolab while we were working on The Leaves of Autumn Symmetry, particularly Dots And Loops. The impressionistic way the band uses the studio on that record (and really throughout their discography) is just really inspiring; it’s the kind of album that lights your brain up while you’re listening to it. It’s ostensibly a pop record, but there are all these exciting, unique sonic moments that float in and out. That was a central goal for re-recording the five songs we chose for the EP: to make sure that the experience of sitting down and listening to the record was always engaging and surprising. It’s guitar music, but what can we bring into the fabric of the songs that isn’t necessarily a distorted guitar or a fast kick drum or a shouted vocal part? That’s what we love so much about Stereolab: you can hear the band always searching for and trying out new ideas and angles.
Phantom Planet – Phantom Planet
A profoundly underrated record and one of our absolute favorites. 11 songs, 35 minutes, tons of hooks and exciting moments and dynamics. Garage punk with pop moves. I think that idea of doing a lot in a compressed bit of time is really vital for us, and really came into play as we were figuring out how to approach these old songs in a new way, all while making sure it could fit on a 7” record. What was the heart of each song; where should we be at our loudest, where should we be at our quietest? Phantom Planet is also a record that manages to fit in some really cool production while also being so focused on energy and tunefulness; I love that balance between the kinetic and the experimental, even if it’s as simple as a power pop band finding surprising ways of arranging a verse or delivering a chorus.
The Clash – London Calling
I could spend all day writing about all the ways that The Clash have influenced us. They’re so completely foundational to our band. For The Leaves of Autumn Symmetry one of our goals was to look at our old songs through the lens of who we are as a band today. And that meant reimagining how we approached the vocals too, since Chelsey sings much more now than when we first started recording our first LP. That’s where The Clash come in for this EP, and London Calling in particular. The way Joe Strummer and Mick Jones would share vocals within those songs, strategically deciding whose voice would work for what moment emotionally, harmonizing, even finishing each others’ lines (check out “Rudie Can’t Fail” if you haven’t already; it’s the all-time example of two vocalists working together to make something iconic). A massive influence on how we arrange vocals in Perennial.
Milemarker – Frigid Forms Sell
One of the things that has developed a lot for our band since 2017 is our use of drum machine, analog synths, fuzz bass, etc… The main ingredients of Perennial are still drums, guitars, and electric organ, but we love the idea of new instruments showing up all of a sudden, adding new shades to what you’re hearing. For instance, for “Hippolyta!” we added a programmed beat to the new version that appears during the bridge, so that what would normally work as a sort of half-time hardcore breakdown gets totally re-contextualized via this drum machine crashing away in the left headphone. I trace a lot of that back to Milemarker, in particular Frigid Forms Sell. It’s angular punk music, but you’re just as likely to hear a Fender Rhodes or Vocoder or 80s post-punk synthesizers as you are distorted guitars. It’s just a really exciting record to spend time with, thanks in large part to how expansive the band’s imagination is on it.
The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: 50th Anniversary Edition
Sgt. Pepper’s is my favorite album of all time, so I could probably include it on any list having to do with how Perennial makes Perennial music, but the 50th Anniversary boxset was a really compelling listen when we were in the process of working back through these old songs and looking for new angles on them. The Pepper boxset includes all these demos and alternate takes and interesting mixes of stuff that at this point is in our bones, so you could sort of listen through it and hear the sonic decision making process. It’s a cool way to think about making a record: as a sort of collage where you can glue everything together lots of different ways. In some respect it was more just a general inspiration for why The Leaves of Autumn Symmetry could be a worthwhile project overall: seeking out different ways to paint the stuff we originally tackled back when we first started.