Sound Salvation Army

The Perms are die-hards in the Canadian rock scene but there’s a very good chance you might not even realize it.

Since releasing their first album Tight Perm in 1998 (which boasts some of the best cover art OF ALL TIME) the trio has been plugging away, trying to break into the next level of musical recognition. Like most bands with day jobs they were issuing records every four or five years, honing their songwriting chops along the way in search of the perfect hook.

The release late last month of Sofia Nights marks a quicker turn-around for the group, having been just two years since the aptly-titled Keeps You Up When You’re Down. The push for rapidity seems to have served The Perms well; Sofia Nights sees them tweaking their sound in a not-too-subtle manner that really fits with their songs.

Let’s face it: a three-piece power pop band can only write the same song so many times. For their latest round of recordings, however, the group decided to embrace immediacy in the studio. They quickly threw out any ideas that weren’t working and pushed forward with a more “hard-edged sound.” If I’m being honest, though, just like an apple can only be so sour The Perms can only be so roughed-up; they aren’t Iggy and The Stooges. Think a little more C’mon and a little less Change Of Heart.

But a little aggression helps make the songs here a bit more memorable than some of their previous work. The guitars a bit grimier, more aggressive, and the tempos remain on the quicker side. “Live For Today” is a lyrically self-evident homily about carpe-ing the diem, backed up by a Big Star-like arrangement complete with a bend-heavy guitar solo. “Mannheim” is a straight-forward positive rocker (”We’re going down to Mannheim…now we’re gonna have a good time”) that may or may not be about the German city. It’s irrelevant, really; one suspects they just needed a city that rhymed with “time” to fit the scheme. “Make It Through” is a more muscular version of a song you might hear performed at a high school prom in a TV show or movie. “In No Time” bridges the gap between The Perms’ softer side and their more muscular rock sounds, a full-on duet about the pains of leaving a lover.

There are some ill-advised decisions here as well, however. Catchy though the music may be, throw-away first single “High School High” comes off like a Bowling For Soup b-side, the kind of arrested development anthem that university juniors were listening to in 2001.

But on the whole The Perms have crafted an undeniably catchy and enjoyable record with Sofia Nights. However, part of me worries about the viability of their product. Pop music simply isn’t what it used to be; Elvis Costello has put out more roots and jazz albums than rock and roll in the last decade or two. As well-constructed as The Perms songs are I’m concerned there just isn’t much of an audience for their sound. Bands that would’ve been considered contemporaries eight years ago (take past tour mates The Meligrove Band, for example) have headed in more indie/synth/dance directions on recent albums where The Perms have, for the most part, stayed true to their basic template. Of course, this is coming from someone who hasn’t listened to the last three or four Weezer albums, so maybe the pop rock community is just beyond my current realm of understanding.

Regardless, Sofia Nights will make for a great windows-down summer rock album for the next couple of weeks, should Saskatchewan’s unseasonably warm fall persist.

 

 The Perms - Mannheim: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

You can find iTunes and Amazon links to purchase all of The Perms’ albums through their website.

The band will also be hitting Saskatchewan for one show this month, apparently. Check them out at Lydia’s Pub on October 21st with openers Fur Eel.

Pat entries Canadian content, pop rock, power pop, the Perms, Winnipeg

While it might not make or break the sales of a record, it never hurts when an artist has a really good back-story for a new album release. We’ve seen it time and time again, even recently, whether it’s Bon Iver’s “heartbroken, ill mid-westerner ensconces himself in a cabin to write miserable break-up songs” or Kanye West’s search for redemption leading him to write a total freak-out rap masterpiece. Well, Winnipeg indie rockers The Details have a pretty good story behind their new full-length Lost Art too. The funny thing is they really don’t need it. Back story becomes irrelevant with an album as carefully written, recorded, and mixed as Lost Art.

The 11-track record is lush and layered, containing an almost magisterial sound that lays out how detail-oriented The Details are as songwriters and musicians. The songs on Lost Art generally revolve around guitarist and singer Joel Plett’s rhythmic guitar playing, which takes an insistent finger-picked form on a lot of the numbers here. Not unlike fellow Winnipeggers The Weakerthans (apologies to both bands for the easy/lazy comparison) it’s that bedrock that serves as the base for a set of mostly-delicate songs that leap back and forth across the bridge between folk pop and indie rock. The most outright rock and roll numbers here, like “Vulture Mechanics” and “Surface Breaks,” bring the power chords but it’s hardly amps-to-11 territory. Subtelty and dynamics go a long way here.

Part of what makes this album such a sheer delight to listen to (and it is, I assure you) is that nothing happens by accident. Everything hits in the right spot at the right tempo with the right emphasis. That seems to be the result of two important factors: first, the band spent no less than three years writing the 11 songs and a full year perfecting every last note. Second, the band enlisted some fairly heavy-hitters to man the boards in the studio: Stephen Carroll, guitarist for the aforementioned Weakerthans, and Brandon Reid, the engineer who makes The National’s records sound simultaneously, huge, intimate, dense, and dynamic.

Should anyone try to tell you that attention to detail doesn’t go a long way simply play them the album’s wondrous highlight and first-half centerpiece “The Original Mark.” A relatively quiet triumph, the song is captivatingly melodic, all yearning vocals, brushed drums, layered guitars, and textured piano, building to an emotional conclusion. That climax also illustrates the intricacies happening on both sides of the recording studio as Plett’s guitar tones change and intensify along with his singing. It adds a deft element to the proceedings that occurs so organically you might not even realize how involved it really is until a half-dozen or more listens. The guitars, piano, and tense strings all bubble to the surface of the mix at the perfect points. It is a literally perfect song, so good that despite having listened to it literally hundreds of times since it was issued last October on a teaser EP I still get a giddy rush every time I hear it.

It makes perfect sense that “Weightless In The Dark” serves as the first single, it’s rock-but-not-too-rock edge and longing vocals forming a perfectly accessible number. The story-song lyrics betray the comfortable groove of the song when you realize Plett has switched from the tale of a pair of former lovers trapped in an elevator to a tale of an impending 100-storey elevator crash that is about to kill said pair of former lovers. “You had tears in your eyes,” Plett declares several times, practically whispering it one final time before the song ends. A somewhat fantastical story, perhaps, but the bait-and-switch happens so naturally it doesn’t come across as cloying. Plett isn’t straining to be clever or cinematic; he’s earnest enough that he doesn’t have to be.

Plett’s storytelling intertwines with the deftly-arranged songs throughout the remainder of the album as well. “Lazy Activists” could be the spiritual cousin of The Weakerthans’ “Pamphleteer” with its tale of disaffected, bored suburban folk who search for a cause just to fill their time, who insist their time spent getting signatures on a petition and listening to Bob Dylan help affect real change. Opener “Satellite” finds its narrator taking comfort in interplanetary bodies of varying sizes and scopes as Plett coos one of the record’s prettiest, albeit briefest, melodies. The mournful “Gravesend Funerals” is the band’s most heartbreaking effort, lamenting the over-medication of a loved one at the end of their life and how the drugs that strive to make that person more comfortable in their last moments, that try futilely to help save them, alter that persons state of being to the point they no longer even seem like the same person. It’s a poignant lyric that becomes even more striking when you realize it’s not the sort of thing someone can write without having the accompanying experience.

I’ve read a number of reviews for Lost Art since it’s release and most of the people that have written about it like it. Even still, plenty of them almost seem like they can’t even say what it is about it that has won them over, referring more to the general mood or sound than anything else. I guess sometimes you just know you like something when you hear it.

It’s a feeling I had late last year when Jim Bryson’s latest effort was released. The Details have helped me realize that the ineffable quality that had me so frazzled, flailing around for the words to describe why I liked that album so damn much, is quite simply quality. The band has made a concentrated effort to craft songs that aren’t compressed to within an inch of their life, that don’t rely on having the loudest hook or the harshest dynamics. They’ve created melodically complex compositions on a large canvas that are at once instantly engrossing and detailed enough to keep you coming back for a second look.

 

 The Details - Weightless In The Dark: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 The Details - Original Mark: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 The Details - Uniform: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Buy this album! Get it on CD here or on iTunes here.

Pat entries brushes with fame, Canadian content, folk pop, guitar pop, indie rock, the Details, Winnipeg

This is kind of a tough one.

The Perms are a group of — from what I remember of the brief Manitoba days of my previous life — exceedingly nice gentlemen who traffic in a vein of power-pop not dissimilar to the pantheon of Canadian pop-rock bands that have come before them. Comparisons to your Plutos, Gandharvas, Limblifters, Bloody Chiclettes, Starlings, et al are apt, as the entire album is washed in constant harmonies and sweet backing vocals, handclaps, tambourines, and a propulsive two-guitar attack.

Admittedly, I’m a fan of the genre. But for some reason I’m going back and forth on this record. Some spins its a slice of toe-tapping greatness, some spins it seems downright anonymous, almost to the point of fading into the background.

Don’t get me wrong: they do absolutely nothing wrong and do nearly everything right. The songs are the band’s most compelling yet and the energy and enthusiasm is there in spades. The tunes are catchy, well-produced, tightly-written, and radio-ready. They sound like they’ve absorbed and taken extensive notes from their forefathers (a Sloan vibe hits early and often) and worked hard to put their own gruff spin on the sound.

A lot of work clearly went into the album and it has plenty of engaging moments. “Give Me All Your Loving” is a catchy, propulsive opening track backed up with some strong swagger. Closer “Salvation” is a high point, slowing things down before ripping into a chorus that could be just as easily about God as it could be a girlfriend. The ambiguity is nice. I think this genre tends to benefit from a little guile. They even sort-of briefly crib the melody from “Footloose” in “Nightshift,” which really threw me off-balance for a second. The song is one of the better tracks on the album despite that retro transgression, amping up the energy and jangle. Later, on “Big Mistake,” the verse hook is eerily reminiscent of some classic guitar pop that I can’t place but I know I’ve heard dozens of times.

But for some reason there are times when I just don’t find myself that heavily drawn to this release. There’s something ineffable about Keep You Up When You’re Down that, on roughly every second spin, leaves me thinking I’ll probably wind up listening to it a few times before abandoning it to collect dust on my CD shelf. It’s a shame, because I really want to like it. I still have a copy of their self-titled debut I picked up at Arcade Records and Tapes in Medicine Hat and it was a very cute and praise-worthy album.

I have no doubt that it will gain an audience in the power-pop community, possibly a very large one. Its got just the right amount of bubblegum, but it doesn’t always taste so sweet. Listen below and judge for yourself.

 

 the Perms - Give Me All Your Lovin' [2:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 the Perms - the Mess: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Check out the Not Lame Records store for purchase or CD Baby for physicals. iTunes has digitals.

Pat entries Canadian content, pop rock, power pop, rock, the Perms, Winnipeg