A Chat with Elizabeth Perran (28.08.26)
Elizabeth Perran’s debut album, February, is a remarkable release that establishes her as an artist with a singular voice, a strong literary sensibility and an adventurous approach to composition and arrangement. We caught up with Elizabeth Perran to speak about the album and all things music.
OSR: You have described February through themes of loneliness, ageing, memory, identity and survival. When did you first realise these ideas were beginning to form a connected world rather than simply appearing as separate subjects in your songwriting?
Perran: Most of the songs on February were written during a four-year period between 2018 and 2022. However, the themes were in my mind at least ten years before then, although I wasn’t aware of them as being connected. Living in New York City, I am regularly exposed to, and affected by, people who are grappling with loneliness, ageing, homelessness and death. My thoughts about these issues came together in February of 2018 in the song ‘Reeds’. Other songs came after, with the exception of ‘Pillars and Tile’, which was written when I was 18.
I began to recognize that I was addressing the same issues from different angles after I wrote ‘Dark, Dark, Dark’. To me, there are two perspectives represented in the songs on February: the first is an experience of struggle and endurance, while the second is a kind of transcendence and celebration of ambiguity and inconclusiveness. In my view, the essence of all the songs is stated in a line from ‘Reeds’: “Why should there have been an answer.”
OSR: The title February comes from ‘Reeds’, yet it seems to become a metaphor for the entire album. What does February represent to you emotionally, and why did that particular month feel like the right way to frame these nine songs?
Perran: To me, February is a month of struggle and suspense as, although the days are gradually lengthening, it’s not known how long the cold will last. Each day brings ice, snow and rain. The intermediate light and bitter cold seem endless and necessitate an attitude of endurance. However, the very severity of that struggle can become celebratory. In keeping with the desperation/ambiguity theme mentioned above, I described this tension in an ad for the album as: “Between the ice of January and the thaw of March is the struggle of February, where endurance is like enlightenment and ambiguity expresses itself with startling eloquence.” Many of the songs on the album reflect this outlook.
OSR: There is a striking literary quality to your songwriting, particularly in the way you introduce characters through fragments, observations and seemingly incidental details. How do you approach creating a character in a song, and how important is it to you that certain aspects of their story remain unexplained?
Perran: Lyrics often occur to me spontaneously. I work outward from imagery and words that occur to me randomly to create full songs and characters. For example, the phrase “sell me an old man” came to me one day out of nowhere as I was parking my car. It is about an actual person, but at the time there were no developed ideas about him other than that phrase. I expanded on it and simply described what I would want to say to him based on our interactions and my observations. I avoided describing him cohesively or through narrative and allowed a few pungent phrases to do most of the work. Each line was written like an indirect punch that also revealed an underlying affection. I aim for my lyrics to be concise and concentrated (although an English professor I had at University was taken aback by the lyrics of ‘Pillars and Tile’, which he thought were too elaborate, even purple).
OSR: ‘Old Woman Against the Winter’ is one of the album’s most affecting portraits of ageing and loss, but the character is never reduced to vulnerability. What did you want to explore about identity, dignity and resistance through that song?
Perran: The lines “I am an old woman against the winter/All my sisters are gone” literally came to me one extremely cold day when I was grocery shopping. I had an image of a feisty older woman who has been compromised but is salvaging, even celebrating, her new identity and status. I built the rest of the lyrics by presenting details from her life in the way I imagined her experiencing them and had her narrate her story. I deliberately left certain issues ambiguous, such as whether she is homeless and/or has dementia, and there is a question underlying the lyrics as to whether it is actually dementia that allows her to survive and celebrate her condition. Ultimately, the song is an attempt to present someone who is resilient and triumphant in her decline. Overall, I aimed to portray both the beauty and horror of aging. The music incorporates both those emotions using the Mellotron, strings and harp.
OSR: ‘Peregrine Man’ feels deliberately enigmatic, with its restrained woodwind arrangement and unexpected harmonic movement. Who is this figure to you, and what interests you about leaving parts of his story unresolved?
Perran: ‘The Peregrine Man’ is about several musicians who inspired me. The peregrine falcon, as a bird of prey, is a metaphor for the impact of these musicians on my musical sensibility and sense of identity. I describe the peregrine man as captivating and transforming me. I left the story somewhat unresolved because I view that impact as ongoing. I would add that it was this collection of musicians who set me on my current musical path by inspiring me to resume songwriting and performing after many years of inactivity.
OSR: The music on February moves well beyond conventional singer-songwriter territory, bringing together British folk, art rock, experimental music and orchestral textures. How did you discover the album’s sonic vocabulary, and were there any particular records, composers or artists influencing your approach during its creation?
Perran: I have eclectic musical tastes. My main musical influences are progressive rock, British folk, classic psychedelic rock and jazz. Some of the artists who inspired the songs on February are King Crimson, Genesis, Pentangle, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Nick Drake, Chick Correa, Nine Inch Nails, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell. There’s a little Cat Stevens in there as well. ‘Pillars and Tile’ was composed with ‘New York Tendaberry’ by Laura Nyro in mind, while ‘Summer’ is reminiscent of ‘Hot Summer Day’ by It’s A Beautiful Day, a psychedelic band from the 1960s I grew up hearing. ‘Sell Me An Old Man’ incorporated sounds from Pentangle and such British folk revival artists as Nic Jones and Dick Gaughan, while with ‘Reeds’, I tried to combine the starkness of ‘Amelia’ by Joni Mitchell with the romanticism of ‘Fritha’ by Camel.
OSR: Analogue synthesisers appear throughout the album and provide an unexpected warmth beneath some of its darker subject matter. What drew you towards that particular sound, and did the synthesisers influence the writing or arranging process in ways you did not initially anticipate?
Perran: I grew up listening to progressive rock, so it’s hard for me not to think in terms of synthesizers. A song like ‘I Remember Rain’ was actually written and arranged with the synthesizers in mind. ‘Old Woman Against the Winter’ incorporates a Mellotron – I had wanted the sound of screaming to be featured at the beginning of the song and even contemplated recording my voice in an overdubbed chorale. However, I found the Mellotron sound was more effective (and easier to record). The synthesizers on ‘Sell Me An Old Man’ were meant to add humour.
OSR: ‘Summer’ almost abandons the conventional boundaries of a song and functions more like a tone poem, while ‘Dark, Dark, Dark’ uses repetition and layered vocals to create something close to ritual. What attracts you to breaking traditional song structures, and how do you know when an experiment belongs within a composition?
Perran: My composing and arranging are very much based on feel. ‘Summer’ actually started life as a piano improvisation. I write about the creation of the song in my Substack blog. I was attempting to capture the sense of confusion and exuberance caused by excessive heat on a summer day. The harmonic structure, melody and arrangement are meant to evoke that delirium. My producer Charles Mueller brought in members of a group called Freelance Nun to play recorder, harp and acoustic bass to complement the piano. His arrangement of those instruments perfectly captures the feel of oppressive heat that I was trying to convey. Otherwise, the lyrics and theme of a song may inspire me to incorporate unconventional song structures. The repetition, unconventional timing and harmonies in ‘Dark, Dark, Dark’ were meant to act as something like a Greek chorus, with the repetitions illustrating futility and desperation.
OSR: Your vocal performances are often remarkably restrained, even when the subject matter is emotionally intense. How do you think about the relationship between emotional expression and restraint, and is there a danger in giving a song too much rather than too little?
Perran: I am very much in favour of understatement in whatever form. I try to avoid acting out my songs and strive to let the words and music convey emotion – either overtly or subliminally. I prefer that listeners work at understanding a song instead of giving them the meaning or dictating how they should react, as that creates the possibility of multiple interpretations and layered meanings.
OSR: ‘Pillars and Tile’ closes the album with imagery of machinery, trains, shadows and the city waking at dawn, while deliberately resisting a neat resolution. Why was an unresolved ending important to you, and what do you hope listeners carry with them when February finally comes to an end?
Perran: I wrote ‘Pillars and Tile’ when I was in my late teens. I was visiting New York City for the first time and had expected to be able to explore it. Instead, I was confined to an apartment for most of the time and rarely went out. One very sad and disappointed night, I took an imaginary trip through the city as I imagined it to be. I was intensely in love with the idea of New York as mysterious, turgid and captivating. In my mind, I placed myself into the subway train that ground to a screeching halt after a night traveling through the winding stairways of derelict apartment buildings and gliding past lamps on the river, exhausted, confronting the metropolis as a lithograph that I couldn’t penetrate. I ended the album with that song not only because of its musical complexity but also as a statement on the themes underlying the entire album – uncertainty, endurance and wonder.
Many thanks to Elizabeth Perran for speaking with us. Find out more about Elizabeth Perran on her Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Bandcamp, YouTube and Spotify.
