French alt-emo band Paerish are ready to make a statement with their new album ‘Rita’, which will be released October 16 via SideOneDummy Records. Once again working with Grammy-winning producer Will Yip, Paerish have really focused down on what makes for a vibrant live show and distilled those visceral elements onto record. The result is an onslaught of riffs, driving rhythm and emotion.
Alongside the announcement, released today, is new single ‘Vapor Cloud’, a driving composition which vocalist and guitarist Mathias Court explains “came from reflecting on the past few years spent writing songs, and the desire to keep that passion alive as time goes by. There’s a certain sadness in seeing how, once people leave their twenties behind, many of them stop being creative in order to pursue a more settled life. As a songwriter, you sometimes wonder whether that urge to create could eventually fade away in you as well, just as it has in so many people around you.”
That’s where ‘Vapor Cloud’ connects with the main theme of the album ‘Rita’ - it’s about drawing from childhood and the band revisiting the memories that pushed them to start writing in the first place. Court continues: “I think there’s a vital need, as an artist, to never lose touch with those creative feelings tied to childhood and adolescence, because they remain an endless source of inspiration.”
This track follows on from the revelation of the record’s first single - the visceral ‘Wait For Dark’ - which was released earlier this year. The band recently teamed up with The Toxic Avenger for a remix of the song, which can be heard here.
Court says: “Rita is an album deeply shaped by childhood memories, the passing of time, and the need to preserve a sense of creative sincerity through the years. Its title refers to a bell tower I could see from the window of my family’s apartment in the South of France when I was a child. Saint Rita, patron saint of lost causes, embodied something both protective and luminous to me, but also the sacrifices and uncertainty that come with having a band and trying to make a living from it.”
This is an album that explores this constant tension between nostalgia and the urgency to move forward. It evokes memories of summers spent on the French Riviera, that very first desire to write music, and the need to keep creating honestly, while also confronting the frustrations of working life, toxic relationships, jealousy, and the fear of losing the creative spark that once felt so natural in youth.
With longtime collaborator (and now firm friend) Will Yip behind the desk for ‘Rita’, the band decamped to the producer’s brand new studio in downtown Philadelphia, even spending Christmas and New Year’s away from their homes and their families. Paerish’s working relationship with Yip spans almost their entire discography as he mastered their debut (2016’s ‘Semi Finalists’) and has now produced the subsequent three full lengths.
The result of their close relationship and everything that has led Paerish to this point, is an album that crystallizes who Paerish are, but also further evolves their sound. Partly, that’s due to the fact that the band really shaped these songs—unlike those on (previous record) ‘You’re In Both Dreams…’—to be played in front of a live audience. It also solidified the current line-up, with drummer Loïc Fouquet its latest addition, and the very evident creative connection they have.
“We toured so much on the last album,” explains bassist Dupraz, “but it's not an album designed to be played live. We love it and we love to play the songs live, but if you want to make people jump or if you're opening for a big act and you want people to go crazy, it's not a good album for that. We were like, 'We want people to jump! Why don't they jump?!' And I think that Rita was the perfect answer to that. We want people go crazy, and this is the perfect album for that.”
‘Rita’ is 11 songs that hit harder—literally and metaphorically—than anything Paerish have made before. It’s louder, brasher, more direct. The shoegazey elements which have been such a defining sound of Paerish’s music are still there, but this is, as Court puts it, “more brutal and raw.” That’s clear from the moment the squalling feedback and crashing drums of opener ‘Prince Of Darkness’—more a reference to John Carpenter than Ozzy Osbourne—kick things off. It’s still dreamy and beautiful in a typically Paerish way, but it feels intentionally more immediate and visceral.
‘Rita’ Tracklist:
1. Prince of Darkness
2. Heal
3. Vapor Cloud
4. What You Want
5. Always Assuming
6. Strawberry
7. Crashing In Circles
8. Wait For Dark
9. Hurry Slowly
10. Swamp Monsters of Malibu
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