Linda Perhacs

The folk firmament of the storied Seventies was dotted with a considerable and untold number of female shooting stars, whose brief passage marked, for the most disparate reasons, the evolution of a songwriting style that still holds great appeal today. Toward the end of the hippie dream, countless folksingers came and went, released through the most obscure (and improvised) labels. True handmaidens in service of one of the least explored artistic "movements" in popular music. In this regard, the story of California's Linda Perhacs is certainly one of the most singular of the era, falling into that great cauldron of singer-songwriters who, one way or another, slipped into the vast grey zone of "American" folklore. The list is truly endless, gathering figures of the calibre of Collie Ryan and Sibylle Baier, Judee Sill and Erica Pomerance. The trait d'union among this host of beguiling vintage-folk poetesses is a missed, and often inexplicable, shot at popular success, one that more often than not intertwines with an ignoble and cruel fate.

It's 1970 and Linda Perhacs is a young dental hygienist at one of Beverly Hills' most fashionable dental practices. Between one celebrity client and the next, the twenty-seven-year-old from Mill Valley crosses paths with composer Leonard Rosenman (who would go on to win two Oscars just a few years later), to whom she confesses her passion for music, and in particular for the intimate folk sound that was then raging along the sun-drenched coasts of the States, led by the likes of Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez. It's a confession that doesn't escape the attentive composer of the scores for "Rebel Without a Cause" and "East of Eden", who, upon hearing the first notes of the magnificent "Chimacum Rain", is left utterly speechless and decides to give Perhacs and her innate talent a chance. Thus "Parallelograms" is born, released on Kapp Records (remastered in 1998 by Michael Piper for his label The Wild Places), containing eleven enchanting gems with an old-world flavour, yet at the same time close to the psychotic deviations of the era's acid-folk.

Young Linda's compositional approach unabashedly embodies the most seraphic traits of femininity of that particular historical moment, blending earth and air to perfection in one final embrace. Alongside a properly bucolic acoustic fabric, whose intent is to support the listener with extreme delicacy while slowly drawing them toward a figurative Eden — essentially a middle ground between Mitchell's own traits and the arcane candour of Anne Briggs (the already mentioned opening track and the enchanting "Dolphin") — there's also a will to dissolve through a carefully composed percussive ritual, as in the hypnotic "Sandy Toes", with its caressing bongos and twelve-string guitar teasing at the soul. This esoteric dispersal reaches its peak in the four and a half minutes of the title track. A docile, graceful opening gives way to a sudden change of course toward the end of the first minute. It's an abrupt fall into the unknown, like an incredulous Alice plunging down the rabbit hole before stumbling into wonderland.

The intimate, arcadian mood carries on splendidly through the many ballads scattered across the album: from the tender "Hey, Who Really Cares?", the only track on the record co-written with composer and saxophonist Oliver Nelson, to the delightful "Morning Colors", certainly the most Mitchell-like moment on the record, followed by "Porcelain Baked Cast Iron Wedding", a kind of unconditional tribute to the early Tim Buckley, all the way to "Delicious", which closes the doors by picking back up the vaguely fairy-tale spirit of the record's first half, in an acoustic pattern that recalls the slow, fervent beating of an angel's wings, come down to earth for a few brief moments just to savour its noblest qualities.

"Parallelograms" would receive only scant, scattered praise, and Perhacs would go back to working as a dental hygienist for the following forty-four years, before returning to the scene with "The Soul Of All Natural Things" in 2014, by popular acclaim and demand from half the indie universe (the Asthmatic Kitty production helmed by Sufjan Stevens is proof enough). In the midst of this long, deafening silence, only a cover of "Hey, Who Really Cares?" by the legendary Whispers and a sample of "Chimacum Rain" lifted by Scott Herren, aka Prefuse 73, would surface, in the beautiful "Surrounded By Silence".

Too little for a work that deserves to be discovered and rediscovered. Then again, it's never too late to lift the veil and behold beauty in its highest forms.

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14/08/2016