Art punk dynamos Perennial shares the bill with Philly emo-punk group Mechanical Canines at Best Video Film & Cultural Center on Sat., April. 5. The show starts at 7 PM and the cover is $10.
Perennial is an art punk three-piece from New England. The band’s sound – built from the sharp minimalism of guitar, electric organ, and drums – is a kinetic collage of mod pop, 90s post-hardcore, post-bop jazz and 60s soul. The band’s ferocious live show – quick and electrifying – has already become the stuff of DIY legend, short bursts of manic energy with barely a moment to catch your breath: not to be missed. Perennial’s new album, Art History is available everywhere that chic modernist punk is sold.
Perennial on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7oLhWWqX188fvNQ6aqxLz3
Perennial on Bandcamp: https://perennialtheband.bandcamp.com/
Perennial on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/perennialtheband/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Perennialtheband/
The devotedly DIY Philly emo-punk band, Mechanical Canines, are on their third effort, following 2020’s and 2022’s. The debut was a Radiohead-indebted take on indie-punk by a new college band testing its capabilities, and its follow-up trimmed down the fat into a whirlwind of Walsh’s inner dialog set to zany rock music, unconstricted by any preconceived notions of the emo tag’s boundaries.
To My Chagrin is a further sharpening of the band’s sound. Thirteen tracks fly by in 23 minutes, and the first 11 are an assortment of 30-second intrusive thoughts blurted into mini-songs, and two-minute bangers squeezing multiple compelling ideas — maybe a country strut or a folksy outro — into the songs’ anti-structures that inevitably revert to punk meter. It’s all over the place. If you hear a catchy hook, don’t expect its return.
Within the unpredictable course of a song is a look-alike reflection of Walsh’s self, and the picture isn’t always pretty. On lead single “,” he drops perhaps the deepest-cutting couplet on the LP: “Reality sank my realized dreams / And it could sink me / I’m barely treading.” It’s a defeatism that pops up throughout the LP; the tragic monologue of a chronic overthinker.
Mechanical Canine on Bandcamp: https://mechanicalcanine.bandcamp.com/album/to-my-chagrin