Carmen Perry with Oodelally and Alma June & The Persian Cats

The Remember Sports frontwoman returns to SPACE with a new full band solo album on Mtn. Laurel Recording Co.

Our lives are measured by memory. Those moments that shift the space around you, pointing to a new door or a new face, changing the shape of what you thought you knew. They make up the neighborhood where we stroll past the challenges overcome, the comedy of errors, a hairpin bend and a learning curve or two. Ten years ago, Carmen Perry moved to Philadelphia with her band Remember Sports, fresh out of college and intent on creating art and music, no matter how tricky that path may be. 

Carmen Perry’s latest solo album Eyes Like A Mirror is an exploration of memory, collecting the blurred colors and souvenirs that coalesce into the collage of her life. As a member of the Philadelphia-based band Remember Sports, Perry is known for her emotional energy and fiercely evocative songwriting, and it’s on Eyes Like A Mirror where she is at her most open. These songs were written over the course of the last ten years, examining the infinite paths we could take and of seeing ourselves through the eyes of the people most important to us. 

It acts as a love letter to her musical and personal community, and features a range of collaborators including Friendship drummer and Dear Life Records co-founder Michael Cormier-O’Leary; audio engineer Lucas Knapp (Friendship, Hour, Florry); Remember Sports members Catherine Dwyer and Jack Washburn; 2nd grade’s Peter Gill; Friendship’s Jon Samuels and Boosegumps’ Heeyoon Won. Perry has crafted a collection of songs that feel like the weathered edges of a photograph housed in a wallet, or a years-old voicemail from a friend, laughing at some dumb inside joke you can barely remember the context of.

“Eyes like a mirror is about growing up and learning who you are through the eyes of the people you love the most,” says Perry. She continues: “I wrote ‘Readjust’ when I first moved to Philly almost ten years ago and had no idea what I wanted out of life, but knew I wanted to try everything. When I hear it now I think of being young and aimless, with the confidence that the pieces of your life will fall into place no matter how badly you fuck up.”

Angular and genre-bending, Oodelally draws influences from folk rock, fiddle music, and classic punk. With love songs featuring fictional adulterers to songs mourning the process of aging, their lyricism is as dynamic as their ever-changing and unique instrumentation. Powerful and captivating vocal melodies shine above a tight rhythm section and electric violin + guitar riffage, developing their own musical language that stuns listeners. Oodelally features the angelic Summit Colman on guitar/voice/flute/accordion, the merry Gabriel Ballard on guitar/voice, the elusive Francesca Houran on electric violin, the mischievous Annie Dodson on bass, and the tender Hunter Coleman on drums. The Portland locals recently released a live album from WMPG’s Local Motives show and are excited to release their debut studio EP very soon. Freshly home after an epic tour of Ireland, Oodelally returns to the SPACE stage! 

Alma June and the Persian Cats is an eclectic amalgamation of styles. Though it never side steps nostalgia, the music is difficult to compare. Jazzy vocals, classical fingerstyle guitar, neo romantic viola stylings weaving in and out of free-flowing beats, intricate and classical bowed upright bass meet with a mourning multi-phonic horn section. Featuring Scott Barber on viola, Dravyn Cloutier on drums, Jorge Allen on saxophone, David Hession on trombone, Nick Rhodes on guitar, Matt Nelson on upright bass, and Alma June on voice and guitar.