Recording: Sandro Perri

Artist: Sandro Perri

Songs: Black Bush [Aaron Freeman cover] + [instrumental #4]

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), July 19, 2024.

Sandro Perri - Black Bush

Sandro Perri - [instrumental #4]

Part of an ongoing series of quarterly shows at The Tranzac, this night saw Sandro Perri backed by a full coterie of longtime collaborators, packing in the Southern Cross "stage" area as much as the rest of the room. That gave a chance to workshop some new material (such as the previously-discovered "Elegant Solution", as well as one called "Morning Shake") but also a chance to stretch out in some different directions, such as the cover heard here and a series of instrumental pieces.

Recording: Sandro Perri

Artist: Sandro Perri

Song: Elegant Solution

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall (Tranzac Fundraiser I), April 20, 2024.

Sandro Perri - Elegant Solution

As part of an effort to find and maintain a stable financial footing, The Tranzac has announced a series of quarterly fundraising concerts, drawing on the starpower of some its regular denizens to fill the Main Hall. Previewing some songs from his next album, Sandro Perri showed off further expansions in his mellow, gently-funky zone, with mildly-expansive songs such as this one (is an "Elegant Solution" the antipode of Ryan Driver's "Fruitless Endeavour"? In any case, this one contains a vocal bridge from Driver) as well as a major new exercise in "infinite songwriting", which like "In Another Life", stretched out for well over twenty minutes and required a trio of additional musicians.

[The second Tranzac fundraiser will be taking place on Friday, June 14th with sets from U.S. Girls, Eucalyptus, and Cots.]

Recording: Sandro Perri

Artist: Sandro Perri

Song: [excerpt from new piece]

Recorded at Array Space (Invocation Presents), January 10, 2019.

Sandro Perri - [excerpt from new piece]

Having seen Sandro Perri present the material from his latest album both solo and with band, I was curious as to whether we'd be seeing another wrinkle on the infinite songwriting of "In Another Life". Instead, playing an opening set for Joseph Shabason's woozy ambient album release, Perri zagged and presented a large-ensemble drift-work of his own. Borrowing Nicole Rampersaud from Shabason's band, he was otherwise joined by regular collaborators Blake Howard, Thomas Hammerton and Josh Cole. It's the latter who helps tie this whole piece together, with a delicious little bass-riff that keeps bubbling up to the surface.

The presence of Cole and Rampersaud also links this to the more abstract work he'd been doing in an un-named quartet with that pair plus Alison Cameron. This was apparently the first time this piece was shared with an audience, so hopefully there will be more chances to delve into its mysterious drift.

Recording: Sandro Perri

Artist: Sandro Perri

Song: In Another Life

Recorded at The Tranzac (Main Hall), November 4, 2018.

Sandro Perri - In Another Life

In celebrating the release of In Another Life, Sandro Perri spent a fair amount of the set darting around the album, presenting some older songs (like "Wolfman" and "Double Suicide", with Ryan Driver as usual coming up to add his voice on the latter) as well as some of the as-yet unreleased songs (like the wonderfully subtle funk of "Wrong About the Rain") that didn't find a place on the new album — there was even a brand new song (possibly called "California Blue") debuted at the start of the set. And yet, the new album material is so expansive in scope that it exerted a certain gravitational pull over the rest of the set. Only the first third (sans guest vocalist/songwriters) of "Everybody's Paris" was essayed, but "In Another Life" was presented in all its glory — "an ongoing experiment", as Perri explained afterwards, where the musical choices could bounce off the song at slightly different angles every time. Mike Smith, making subtle adjustments via the sampler, was key to the presentation here, while Blake Howard's percussion kept it from being too tightly locked into that determinist groove. (Josh Cole, on fretless bass, and Thomas Hammerton on keyb completed the group.) I posted a recording of Perri's solo version of this song not so long ago, but this seems like a case where the alternate arrangement gives a beneficially-different approach to its study.