Confessions of an insomniac

Who the fuck knows how massive loss is going to effect someone, i can't say i'd like to find out for myself. I've not been sleeping so well this week. Sign of a troubled mind i guess, but all i've lost is a relationship, the feeling of loss will pass, and the friendship might even return. So in the scheme of things it's not so bad, like they say in the classics: Worse things have happened at sea.

But do all things, good and bad, make a better artist? I'm not taking the piss, i'm just asking. Thing is i knew the back story of the next guy i'm gonna play before i heard his music, did that make me find his work any sadder? Any more beautiful?

That's a rhetorical question by the way, i don't expect any of you to write the answer on the back of a post-card and send it to me. That would be silly.

But i do wonder do YOU want the back story?

That one's not rhetorical, i'm giving you the choice, skip this next paragraph if you want.

Elvis Perkins is the son of actor Anthony Perkins and photographer Berry Berenson. He lost his dad to AIDS in 1992 and lost his mum in the 2001 9/11 terrorist attacks. I dunno if that makes for a sad sounding debut album, but i'm betting it doesn't help. By his own admission it did affect his writings, the title of his first album "Ash Wednesday" is a homage to his parents. "The title refers to being left on Wednesday with nothing but ash, because she died on a Tuesday - being left with ash on September 12. That was also the day my father died, September 12".
And he's only 34. That's fucked.

Anyways, young Elvis has released two albums so far, "Ash Wednesday" in 2007 and then "Elvis Perkins in Dearland" in 2009. I have to admit i know nothing of latter but i adore the opening track from the former.

"While You Were Sleeping" is a transcript of an insomniacs midnight musings, and it's almost poetic. Actually scratch that, as far as lyrics go, it's practically a poem.

"While you were sleeping
the babies grew
the stars shined and the shadows moved.
time flew, the phone rang
there was a silence when the kitchen sang
its songs competed like kids for space
we stared for hours in our maker's face
they gave us picks
said go mine the sun
and gold and come back when you're done"

And it sounds lush, building slowly from an acoustic start a full band complete with trumpets round it out. The lazy reviewer in me wants to compare him to Elliot Smith, mostly because his tender melancholic folk guitar stylings sound more than a bit like Elliot Smith. Your even lazier reviewers compare him to Dylan, but that's just obvious, the influences might be there but the sound is not.

But why just believe what lazy reviewers think anyway? Here you go...

davey