Linda Perhacs: Becomes a Dentist, Is Rediscovered
I learned about this album about a month ago, and since then I’ve been doing two things: Listening to it - again and again and again - and waiting for the muse to inspire me so I could do it justice in a review. Since it’s spring break, I figure it’s time that I stop waiting on fate and do the thing.
Linda Perhacs released Parallelograms, her only album, in 1970. It received little attention and did poorly in sales. Fast forward 35 years, and Linda is a middle aged dentist in Southern California. Suddenly she learns that she has fans all over the world who adore the album. I’m one of them, and you will be too. Since then, she is allegedly working on two new albums, sang on Devendra Banhart’s Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, and had music featured in several films.
Why this new found success? Certainly, the new found interest in the creative works of the 1970s by young people, thirsty for any music their parents overlooked is part of the equation. But Perhacs offers more than another setting of the same psychedelic aesthetic that has become a benchmark of her decade. Droning guitar and beatnik spoken word sounding lyrics one tracks like “Paper Mountain Man” mimic the the elements we expect from a Southern Californian love child. Her fluid, bright vibrato and intricate acoustic guitar picking might be compared to Joni Mitchell, but it would be imprecise. Perhacs sounds like herself - Paralellograms gets my attention because it is as relevant in her decade as it is now. I hear Angel Deradoorian in the haunting, dissonant vocal harmony on “Chimacum Rain.” I hear St. Vincent on “Delicious,” where the song seems to grow out organically out of the inseparable combination of guitar and vocals. Theses songs pull you in both because of the attention to color and dissonance, but because you believe them. It seems impossible that Perhacs’ crystalline voice could be anything but honest. Invariably, I’m fucking this review up. Paralellograms deserves our attention if not because of the incredible story behind it, if not because it predicts some of the most unique female performances from 2010, listen to the record because it is evocative, purely evocative.
Ian S. Wayne
Wayne’s Roadhouse, Wednesdays @ 10PM
