No Frills Reviews

Hardcore punk fury meets 60’s cool in this all-energy collage of hard-hitting rock sounds

One of the first things you might notice on the third album from New England trio, Perennial, is that quite a few moments sound similar to each other. The pounding riffage, which opens the album on title track Art History, reappears in the intros to Action Painting and How The Ivy Crawls, before being fired out at machine gun speed in the album’s closing moments. But this repetition doesn’t betray a lack of ideas, it kind of is the idea.

There’s almost a deconstruction and reconstruction taking place across these songs; the constituent parts remain broadly the same but they’re repurposed into something different each time, with new twists emerging every step of the way. Now, when the reviewer is throwing out terms like deconstructed, it usually means you’re in for some of the most tedious experimental shit imaginable. But the beauty of Art History is that it’s an experiment in going hard as fuck.

This is a short collection of 1-2 minute songs delivered with the frenzied aggression of hardcore punk and packed with nods to various 60s influences. You might catch flashes of classic rock greats like The Who, The Animals, or Revolver-era Beatles. While there’s also some sneaky pop sensibilities on display. What may initially seem like a fairly straightforward set of punk thrashers, is brimming with snippets that’ll have you trying to work out where you’ve heard them before.

And I can’t understate how great it all sounds – whether it’s buzzsaw guitars or an easy-going whistle – you just have to sit back (or jump around) and soak in the glorious noise. That noise is occasionally broken up by brief interludes of glitchy electronic ambience; as if the machines are re-configuring before they spit out the next unhinged concoction. These moments double-up as brief respites amidst this aural assault; neatly pacing the album to avoid burning out on the bangers.

The album does have its flaws. The vocals, split between Chelsey Hahn and Chad Jewett, can verge on screechy abrasiveness. Albeit they do at least try to stretch their limited range, from hushed spoken word sections to howls of righteous anger. And lyrically, there’s not any great depth here. In fact, it often borders on nonsense. But it’s magnificent rock & roll nonsense. Like frantic paraphrasing of Stevie Wonder – “In the middle of the night, oh yeah, alright, up-tight”, or crazed rambling – “Tiger technique, yeah, everyday of the week”. The vocals and lyrics may not stand up to much scrutiny, but they capture the album’s frenetic energy so it never feels like they actively detract from the experience.

At just 22 minutes long, is this maybe a bit light to be considered a great album? Definitively not. Everyone should be making shorter albums. It’s a rare example of the old ‘all killer’ cliché. It achieves what it sets out to do and then disappears leaving a trail of wreckage in its wake. I mean, do we really want the dude who was just screaming about his ‘tiger technique’, to suddenly start singing an earnest ballad to add some emotional depth to the album?

Art History is like an intense sampler of some of the best moments from rock history. A reminder that it’s still possible to take pieces of the past and turn them into urgent, exciting rock music.

Best tunes: Art History, Up-tight, Tiger Technique

---

Purchase Art History and find more from Perennial via Bandcamp

---

More Reviews