Four years this October, occasional TTA writer – and acclaimed Irish in her own right – Maija Sofia introduced the sublime dream-pop of Perlee. Comprising Saramai Leech and Cormac O’Keefe, the Navan-bred, Berlin-based duo have since carved out their space via Half Seen Figure and Slow Creature, two EPs distilling their finely-woven dream-pop craft to four each tracks each.
Today, the pair underscore the status as one of the country’s most singular talents. Exploring “unconditional love, the banality of a capitalist society, destiny and self-realisation,” Speaking from Other Rooms is a debut LP that feels widescreen and prismatic in equal measure. Featuring highlights including lead single ‘Lampshade’, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs-inspired ‘Reckoning’ and emphatic closer ‘The Wave,’ it’s an entrancing, uniquely earworming triumph from Leech and O’Keefe.
Touching a little more on the album, the pair said: “Mostly though it is about love; long-distance love, love that strives to exist across a physical distance, across generations, between lovers and across time.”
Speaking about ‘The Wave,’ a song which revolves around a remarkable tale from her teenage years when she spent a summer on board a sailing boat in the Baltic Sea, Leech said: “Four of us were on watch at about two o’clock in the morning and we heard lots of strange sounds coming from the stern. We could see little shoots of water and air when the captain shone a light in the sea. There were about fifteen baby whales asleep and swimming in the wake of the boat, thinking that the hull was a mother whale,” she explains.”
“Before they knew it, the whales’ 40ft long real mother was swimming in figures of 8 underneath the boat, in an attempt to scare off the strange vessel that was stealing her babies. “Luckily she didn’t ram the boat and we didn’t sink. The strong light the captain was wielding with care gradually woke the baby whales and they drifted off to swim in the wake of the mama whale. It was surreal and got me thinking about the ferocity of unconditional love, especially a mother’s love.”
Speaking from Other Rooms is out today. Buy it digitally and on vinyl via Bandcamp and stream it in full below.
