featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
December 3, 2024
Scott Foley, purveyor of reverie
Karen and Don Peris released their first record as Innocence Mission more than thirty-five years ago. In so many ways the world is not the same today, though Innocence Mission's thirteenth studio project sounds quite a bit like their 1989 self-titled debut. In those days, the Pennsylvania Perises were regarded 'neath the same umbrella as indie-folk acts like 10,000 Maniacs and the Sundays. In the ensuing years, the duo have released hymns, lullabies, nursery rhymes, standards, and traditionals, each of which sound entirely at home alongside Innocence Mission's originals.
It's not a slight to say that Midwinter Swimmers follows in the tradition of earlier collections. The duo, along with longtime bassist Mike Bitts, settled into their sound early on, music that is both expansive and intimate, almost existing outside of time in all the most complimentary ways. Built to house Karen Peris' often exquisite poetry, delivered in her trademark coo, Innocence Mission's songs are like snow globes - not for their fragility or preciousness but for their perfectly contained economy of song. "A Hundred Flowers" features a busily fingerpicked acoustic guitar and an indefinite piano, eventually introducing a tambourine and flute: Some linden trees watched us drive off in a hurry / Sometimes life doesn't happen like you plan. There's a lo-fi quality to the project, with Peris' voice treated with echo or lightly layered. There's a cafe jazz swing to "Your Saturday Picture", with its more prominent bass and brushed drums. Even the electric strings are soft as a breeze through branches. The arrangements are thoughtful as horns enter the session and the singer describes a walk down a Philadelphia street: And the trees arch over now / Their protecting arms / And the streetlight blinks to cross / Love is the ON the ON the ON.
Innocence Mission's feathered sound and dreamy studio treatment often obscure Karen Peris' lyrics, an effect that's likely not unintended. Like Cocteau Twins (in 2017 Peris worked with Simon Raymonde), her delivery remains evocative, the rise fall and hush of her voice conveying plenty of emotion. A read through the lyric sheet for Midwinter Swimmers can be a revelation. More than a capable lyricist, Peris' is a true poet: This is you and I / When we said we think we can get there again / Golden languages of mosses and sunlight / The edge of the world that is not the end. "Camera Divides the Coast Of Maine" is almost heartbreaking in its conspiratorial beauty, scratched guitar and weeping strings. Much of Swimmers, and much of Karen Peris' poetry, focuses on the small gestures of nature in an urban setting. Petals fall, colors glow, and light dapples, each a mirror of human sentiment. Even when a lyric's story is opaque, the meaning is clear. On "John Williams": I was not staring at the ceiling / I'm just between some thoughts / It is the blankness of a new page / It is the possibly new place / I haven't seen it all.
Across thirteen LPs, Karen and Don Peris have produced this remarkably consistent, decidedly simple music. From 1995's breakthrough Glow through Small Planes and My Room In the Trees, to 2020's gorgeous See You Tomorrow, Innocence Mission make songs that suggest colors and convey emotions. On the new "Sisters and Brothers", she discloses: I lost something I used to be before / I don't know why I'm crying, in the meantime / I will hold these things in my heart. "This Thread Is a Green Street" balances strummed acoustic, layered vocals, strings, then drums, each like petals curled in towards one another. The individual parts cite the jangle of 60s folk, the soft blur of shoegaze, the expressive restraint of chamber jazz. The whole is so recognizably Innocence Mission.
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