VOLUME ONE

With a word like Perhaps, which signals uncertainty and procrastination, it is a lovely paradox that this band named so bear a certain and urgent energy in its sonic scheme, a scheme that reveals itself proud in its structural lunacy. Perhaps is, to explain it more accurately, the name of a new standard for the math-rock language, a standard fueled by an amalgam of eclectic approaches to other rock trends ? post rock, stoner, progressive psychedelia, jazz-rock. The band's debut release is a one-track album (cassette) entitled "Volume One": it was recorded live at Mike's Basement Studio in May, to be released in September: a very impressive jewel in the ever-refreshing avant-garde rock scene of the USA. The musical travel of "Volume One" kicks in with a 2 minute prologue whose distant aura sounds like the departure of a boat in a mysterious ocean. Then comes the first explosion of exquisite rock madness, a bonfire of sound that encapsulates the power of early Don Caballero and the extravagance of later Hella, with the jazz-rock swings not being absent in the ever-developing rhythmic engineering that goes on flowing through the successive motifs. McDermott's work is like Ian Williams-meets-Steve Howe-meets-Larry La Londe, while the bassist's style bears strong heritages from Michael Manring's vitality and Tony Levin's groove. The 5/4 section that gets started before the 8- minute mark feels particularly ballsy: the presence of the guest sax is a big help concerning that elaboration of complex strength. The following motif goes to farther territories of mischief and complexity. A few seconds after the 19-minute mark, the band creates an interlude built on a spacey standard of jazz-rock (with hints to late-60s Miles Davis). Later on, the band goes back to the realms of explicit rocking energy, going for a Sabbath-Zeppelin strategy cleverly distorted by the math-rock factor. This moment of neurotic joy works, in the grand scheme of things, as a threshold to the epic finale, which is an orgiastic exercise on post-rock built on the models of Maudlin Of The Well and Godspeed You Black Emperor! This final passage is the very essence of magnificence, sad yet vibrant, reflective yet electrifyingly intense. This is the "natural" conclusion of a musical journey designed to show Perhaps as a very relevant artistic force in the current experimental rock scene in the USA. Nothing else to say.