Day 385: Linda Perhacs – Parallelograms
I’m still working on upgrading the site right now, I’m kind of attached to this version but I’m revamping the whole thing. It’s going to take a while to finish but I’m still on it, hopefully it’ll be a bit more refined – I really didn’t plan on continuing past a year but since I am, I might as well put a bit more effort into it. Anyway, today’s album is a bit of psychedelic folk from Linda Perhacs. I’ve had this album on my list of things to listen to for ages, it’s finally time.
Album cover courtesy of Kapp Records
In the early 1970s, Linda Perhacs was working as a dental assistant in Beverly Hills when one of her clients, film composer Leonard Rosenman, asked her what else she likes to do. She said she likes to travel and write songs. He asked her for a tape, so she made one at home and gave it to him, and he told her they should record an album together.
The resulting record, Parallelograms, was released in 1970. It was far from being a commercial success, it ended up selling very poorly, aided by the fact that the record wasn’t getting promoted by the label at all. According to Perhacs, the quality of the original vinyl pressing was so bad that you couldn’t hear what they’d recorded, and the label refused her request to have it redone. She said, “As no one suggested making another record, I focused on the other things in my life instead.” She went back to being a dental hygienist.
Some 40 years later, the album was rereleased without her knowledge, and she started getting interview requests from publications who wanted to know more about it. It had become a bit of a cult classic, and folk fans recognised that this one was a hidden gem. She ended up releasing two more albums in the 2010s, about 43 years after her debut.
It’s a very touching album, there’s something special about it. Linda Perhacs has a beautiful and almost angelic voice, and the songs are like floating psychedelic poems. She wasn’t educated in music theory, but she communicated what she wanted in her songs through drawings and colours rather than chords. She had a spiritual awakening and said the music just came to her, saying “it came at me overnight, like a wave. I had no real prior training. The parts that are good are pure soul speaking to you.”
You can’t help but to be sad about the missed opportunity and the talent she didn’t get to use in the decades in the middle of her life – this was the first thing she put out, imagine what she could have done with support and people nurturing her talent. There’s something both very unusual and clever about the sound, maybe it’s the lack of formal training that makes it so charming, and it becomes especially interesting when paired with her very traditional, beautiful voice. She kind of sounds like what I’d imagine a siren would sound like, there’s something mystical about it.
It’s a lovely, moving album that I really enjoyed, I’d like to light a candle and listen to it in the dark. I’m giving Parallelograms a very solid 9/10.