Paerish
PARIS-BASED AND JUMANJI-INSPIRED PÆRISH HAVE JUST RELEASED THEIR DEBUT ALBUM, ‘SEMI FINALISTS’.
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hey say good things come to those who wait. For French quartet Pærish, that’s certainly true. Their debut album ‘Semi Finalists’ may be new to the world, but for everyone involved, it’s been a long time coming. After successfully crowdfunding with French platform KissKissBankBank, it took another few years for the album to finally be released. “We recorded these songs two years ago, but most of them are way older than that. It’s strange, because we played them live for years, and now people are finally hearing the studio versions years later - we didn’t really know what to expect anymore,” relates frontman Mathias Court. “We went into this completely unsure, and we’re really surprised the album got such a warm welcome.” Prior to the album, Pærish were known
WORDS: ALMA RODA-GIL
by their peers as Crackity Flynn, and started recording under that same name; however, as Mathias recalls, it wasn’t meant to happen that way. “We asked Vince Ratti, who did the mixing on our album, to send it around to his contacts and when they got back to him, they all had the same feedback: they loved the songs, but they were unanimous that the name wasn’t cutting it.” So in reference to Jumanji character Alan Parrish, they became Pærish, and ‘Semi Finalists’ was ready. At the core of their grunge-tinted indie rock is a deeply personal relationship with these songs. “We’ve got friends who knew these songs under their old names and listened to them here and there over the years,” says Mathias. “For me, this album is a flashback of sorts spanning years; the closing track is a song we played at our first show ever, which would be about six years ago! It’s kind of a mix between old and new: the three or four singles we’re in
the process of releasing are the most recent songs, but the album looks back on who we were as students when we met in film school, and it sees us come of age too.” And despite the fact that some of these songs are among the first the band ever wrote, they don’t lack substance and potential; their sound gets onto a whole new level as their songs explode into anthem-like choruses. Pærish have something more. Like Biffy Clyro at their best, imagining their songs with a big live set up isn’t hard at all. “I think what we’ll write in the future and what I’m already writing will be much quicker for us,” outlines Mathias, “and will reflect who we are now.” Overall, things are looking good. It’d be foolish to sleep on this lot. P Pærish’s debut album ‘Semi Finalists’ is out now.
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