Linda Perhacs – Parallelograms
Here is a freak folk album that, whilst recorded in 1970, didn’t come into any form of recognition until the mid 2000’s, hwen it was re-released in 2005 with the growing popularity in new weird America. An important preface to my opinion of the album can be clearly seen in
this post though. I am pretty solidly an instrumental fan, and vocals are my most picky area when it comes to enjoying music and it’s fair to say that I dislike MOST vocals. So what’s going to happen when an album virtually revolves around its vocals? I had better hope I enjoy them immensely.
Parallelograms, as I mentioned, is a freak folk album based around Linda’s placate vocals with some occasional psychedelic elements present. That’s all well and nice, but unfortunately I was never able to find myself sucked in by the vocals. Sure they are nice and all, but overall IMO they aren’t strong enough to carry and album to keep me interested. The backing music has some pretty open changes for a purely backing aspects, sometimes offering a more country attack, sometimes a more psychedelic mood, sometimes straight up folky-ness. But overall, it is nothing to get excited about if the vocals aren’t to your liking. Some of the vocal layering also annoying me to no end, however with this they did capture the ‘essence’ of the album and title particularly. Sometimes her vocals are recorded and then layered, giving the sense of having more than one vocalist involved. Being the same voice obviously represents the Parallelograms title, but something annoying me about them sometimes.
I must say though, that despite not being to my liking, it is quite fitting and pacifying in the correct context. Raining like hell outside, cold (Despite being 3 days until summer starts, and being the end of spring, where it got to 40 degrees just yesterday), and a beer in hand, it just all fit. So I can’t say it was a totally negative experience which was odd considering I wasn’t a fan of the music in a purely analytical context.