Elvis Perkins - Ash Wednesday

Elvis Perkins’ debut album started life as a collection of home-made demos, which were cut to analogue tape, then fleshed out (with the help of a small group of friends and fellow musicians), in a Burbank studio and at a Victorian house in L.A The resulting material is ‘Ash Wednesday’, a beautiful album in which Perkins transforms circumstances of his personal life into compelling, dream-like songs with lyrics that teeter between the specific and the surreal. For the last year and a half, Perkins (alongside his three-piece band: bassist Brigham Brough, keyboardist/guitarist Wyndham Boylan-Garnett, and drummer Nicholas Kinsey, known collectively as Elvis Perkins in Dearland) has been doing club dates in the USA to increasing acclaim; touring with such acts as Okkervil River, Dr. Dog, Matt Costa and the Pernice Brothers; appearing at events like Seattle’s Sasquatch! Festival, Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits; and performing on radio stations like Seattle, Washington’s influential KEXP and L.A.’s KXLU. ‘Ash Wednesday’ conjures a powerful mood, with horn arrangements reminiscent of the both mournful and joyful brass bands played at New Orleans funerals and snatches of elegant, understated strings Perkins divides the album into two distinct “sides,” with the title track as the metaphorical side-two starter. 

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