Perlee - 'Reckoning'
Irish band Perlee release new single, ‘Reckoning’ before the release of their debut album, ‘Speaking from Other Rooms’.
Speaking from Other Rooms, the debut album from Berlin-based Irish band Perlee, is an album about unconditional love, the banality of a capitalist society, destiny and self-realisation. Mostly though it is about love; long-distance love, love that strives to exist across a physical distance, across generations, between lovers and across time.
The couple, who originally met through the DIY scene in their hometown of Navan, formed Perlee. In 2018, the duo moved to Berlin and had good fortune from finding a rehearsal space and in the early says they splayed several gigs every week in smoky bars, house concerts and clubs until the pandemic hit. With the duo unable to tour, they began to focus on their album with songs mainly written in their Berlin studio, while drummer Matt Ingram recorded his parts in London. This collaboration brought a sense of spaciousness to the project and that the songs can be reflected upon and refined as the album progressed.
During the recording of the album, Saramai became pregnant with their son, which began the race to get everything done before he arrived. She says, “I was a few days overdue and having conversations with my bump, asking that he would let me have a couple more days to finish mixing and exporting the album. Luckily, he obliged!” Maternal love features heavily across the album, particularly the closing track, ‘The Wave’ which is based on a dramatic tale from Saramai’s teenage years, where she spent a summer on board a sailing boat in the Baltic Sea. She explains that “There were about fifteen baby whales asleep and swimming in the wake of the boat, thinking that the hull was a mother whale,” and before they all knew it, the whales’ 40ft long mother was swimming in figures of 8 underneath their boat, in attempt to scare them off. This got her thinking of the ferocity of unconditional love, especially a mothers.
‘Speaking from Other Rooms’ also demonstrates their aptitude for writing catchy indie-pop earworms. Their lead single, ‘Lampshade’ is a real standout, about the search for the right decisions and people in life. Followed by the new single, ‘Reckoning’ which was inspired by the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s song, ‘Maps’, the dystopian single is about the end of the world and the weird space where you contemplate the end of being and what matters.
Words by Bethany Simms
