You might remember Carmen Perry as the frontwoman of Remember Sports, the energized power pop band she relocated to Philadelphia with fresh out of college circa 2015. This week marked the release of her first solo album, Eyes Like a Mirror — a collection of songs Perry has written over the course of the past decade.
The album dives into Perry’s most vulnerable personal moments — coming out as queer, being diagnosed with autism, and a depressive episode during the COVID-19 pandemic — along with moments of learning, growth, and deep friendship she’s experienced with her bandmates while touring over the years. For Perry, Eyes Like a Mirror is something of a time capsule, and most importantly, a reflection on learning how to see herself through the eyes of her loved ones.
Carmen Perry returns to SPACE on June 16, supported by Oodelally and Alma June & the Persian Cats. Tickets are available here.
Can you tell me about the title, Eyes Like a Mirror? What was the inspiration behind it?
Eyes like a mirror is a line in the song “Swimming Around,” which sort of felt like the crux of the album to me.
I think the oldest one I wrote was in 2013 – I wrote “Benjamin” when I was still in college. A lot of them are songs I’ve written since that I always wanted to record, but they weren’t right for [Remember] Sports and I sort of never got my shit together to record on my own until recently. So yeah, Eyes like a Mirror describes, like, the general finding myself through the people that I love. That was the main theme. Like my bandmates, Catherine and Jack, who have been through a lot with me. Moving to Philly and finding community here, and learning to see myself and learning who I am through other people’s eyes. So I picked that out of that song to title the album.
So, the earliest you’ve written a song on this album is 2013?
Yeah. I think that is the only one I wrote when I was still in college — “Benjamin.” The rest of the album covers me moving to college, or moving to Philly, and being an adult on my own for the first time. “Readjust” was the first one I wrote when I lived in Philly, [about] like the whirlwind of being on my own for the first time and figuring out what kind of life I want to have, and being confused and scared and all of those emotions but also excited for the future and to do what I want.
How does it feel to play all of these songs you’ve written years ago now?
I’m really, really excited to tour on this album. I haven’t ever done a solo tour before — outside of Remember Sports — and so it feels really trippy recording some of these songs from my current perspective as, like, a real adult who’s been through all this stuff and figured out how to be a person. It feels like such a privilege to be able to sing songs I wrote so long ago and breathe fresh life into them, because it’s such a different experience playing songs in my room versus playing them for an audience. I’m so excited to get to do that.
Coming from your band Remember Sports, is your approach to songwriting different for your solo music? And if so, how?
That’s a good question. I would say the approach is the same. I think songwriting has just always been a way for me to work through my feelings as they’re happening and get them out of my brain and my body and turn it into this memento of a specific time. Sometimes those songs end up feeling right for Sports, which would be a little more energetic or poppier, or just better for a full band to play. Other times, it ends up being sort of quiet, like a song like “Benjamin” or “Swimming Around” that is closer to the chest and calmer. So the approach isn’t different, but it just depends on where the song ends up going.
You mentioned moving to Philadelphia with Remember Sports after college to pursue music. What were the biggest challenges you faced during that time —personally or as a band?
So, we moved here in 2015. This is my 10th year in Philly, which is wild, because I wasn’t ever really sure if I was gonna stay or how long, and yet, here I am. This album covers so much. Interpersonal drama that we’ve had as a band, I think, shows up here, but also the strengthening of our relationship to each other as friends.
Being in a band and touring with people is such an intimate experience. I have gotten to know them in such a different way than I know other people. It’s thrilling to be on tour and stay with somebody’s random uncle or second cousin and get to meet all these people in each other’s lives that I wouldn’t meet otherwise, and seeing people from a different perspective than you do in normal life.
So much has changed for me since I first moved here, and at the same time, it feels like not a lot has really changed. I came out as queer later in life, and so some of the songs are about that. I was diagnosed with autism a few years ago, and stuff like that just really has helped me figure out, like, how to see myself and how to relate to people, and just going through all that learning and discovering as a person has been really confusing and illuminating. That’s usually the stuff that I choose to write about, since it’s a way for me to work through it.
I really liked what you said about getting to know your band members from different perspectives while touring. I felt the same way on my first tour last year!
Touring is one of my favorite things in the world. Meeting random family members and hearing stories about when they were younger, or learning what people’s sleep habits are, what they do when they’re bored in the car. The bigger stuff too, like how you work through problems together. I love having a shared, common purpose — we all are here to drive to these places and play these shows, and everything that happens in between is in service of that. It gives me so much more purpose than I feel like any other time in my life.
Would you say that this album reflects a journey from where you were back then to where you are now, or does it function as more of a time capsule of experiences to look back on?
I think it’s kind of both. Thinking about where I was 10 years ago, there’s a lot of stuff that’s happened that has shaped the person that I am now. And so it’s definitely nice to have a time capsule of that, but also, I know I’m not done growing, you know? I’m interested to see how I’ll feel about these songs when I’m like 40 or 50 and what’s gonna happen by then.
I just love making albums and being able to have them as a time capsule of who I was then. A lot of the Sports albums felt a little bit more present, like the songs were more recent. This was an interesting experiment, to take these older songs that I’ve written and put them together in a cohesive way and present them as a time capsule of a longer time.
All of the songs are deeply personal, but is there a song or two on this record that are especially meaningful to you?
I think “Swimming Around” feels like the most personal song on the record — also maybe the saddest. I wrote that song from probably the worst period of depression that I’ve ever been in as an adult. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, a lot of people have. I think after COVID, or during COVID, I really felt like I didn’t know if touring was going to be a thing. I didn’t know if we were going to get to play music again like we did before. I just felt so stuck and hopeless about the future. I just felt like I really was down in a bad way. I think writing songs like that helps me feel better, just getting it out of my body and being able to turn it into something that people can listen to and hopefully enjoy, or feel something from. So “Swimming Around” is that song to me.
But I also love a song that sounds kind of happy but actually is kind of sad. The song “Soft, Brown Jacket” was like that on this record too. That one’s about going through changes in a relationship with a person and wanting the comfort of them being there and being the person that they have been to you for a long time, but not necessarily having them there. It’s just like, who am I without you? So that song is pretty upbeat, but made me cry the most when we were recording it. Sometimes it’s hard to revisit the past and feel all those feelings again, like how scared you were, how sad you were.
What are you most excited about for this show and tour?
I’m definitely excited to be in Portland. I love Maine. Sports played at SPACE Gallery two summers ago and we had a great time there. I am touring with a band, so it’s not going to be totally different from Sports. Also Jack from Remember Sports is going to play in the band, which is nice because we have so much history together and have toured together so much. Jack has been in other bands, and Catherine [Dwyer of Remember Sports] has been in other bands, but I haven’t really toured with another band so I’m just really excited to see what my other two bandmates are like on tour.
Sports put out an album in 2021 during COVID, and we didn’t get to tour on it. It felt really anticlimactic and that’s the last time I released an album before this. I’m just really excited to get to connect with people and hopefully see people interacting with the songs and the music, and get to perform in a different way than I perform in Sports. It’ll kinda be the first time that I get to do that.
Courtney Burnett is a Bowdoin student and part-time touring drummer with indie-folk band Night Hawk.