PARALLELOGRAMS

In an absolutely stunning show of unabashed and everlasting experimentation, but also just pure, human beauty, Linda Perhacs opens her once-short-lived music career with 1970's Parallelograms. Produced, mastered and pressed in the most terrible way conceivable and then also promoted most disrespectfully limited, this avant-garde and Psychedelic Folk masterpiece was nearly lost to time... It was following this initial release that she herself threw out her own copy of her own debut album and returned to her career as a dental hygienist...

Thanks to the understandable and increasing love for her work, crap-pressings aside, by those, most notably, from the region and folk scene of LA where she did and still does reside (specifically Topanga Canyon), Parallelograms subsequently became a cult classic. She was purportedly approached after a not-so-pleasing reissue (according to Pitchfork, a headphones-unlistenable CD version of the already poor-quality originals) to release a remastered version of this, her debut. The quality was enhanced all the further by recordings she had in her home. What a gift!

Since then, thanks to further encouragement from admittedly much younger Canyon peers and eventually would-be modern Prog maestro Fernando Perdomo with whom she then worked (you can see from my not-too-old reviews how I view his early discography...), she released her second album, The Soul of All Natural Things, in 2014. It was issued via Sufjan Stevens' label Asthmatic Kitty. In 2017, she followed that album with an album whose cover I actually recognized: I'm a Harmony.

Aside from the partially terribly produced but frankly really cool "Porcelain Baked-Over Cast-Iron Wedding", the current 2014 reissue, available I assume everywhere, is really an image of beauty and grace. I am truly blessed by it today. From the cascading and stunning "Chimacum Rain" that starts off the affair, other such classics in Folksy singer-songwriter include "Dolphin", the Joni Mitchell-esque "Sandy Toes", "Hey, Who Really Cares", the light-orchestral "Morning Colors" and the finale, "Delicious". Psychedelic, even avant-garde in nature, are the following: "Call of the River, the at once quieted psychedelia then haunting experimentalism of "Parallelograms", and the would-be-Björk-esque Raga "Moons and Cattails" (honestly reminds me of "Donkey Jaw" off the first America album). "Paper Mountain Man", as is the aforementioned "Porcelain...", is an excellent, rockin' Folk Rock number. Very riveting and almost funky.

Don't miss this one. It's beautiful and expansive.

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