New England’s dance-punk icons Perennial have been growing in stature over the past few years, regularly booking tours from California to England. At Deep Cuts on Saturday 9/19, the trio had reason to celebrate; they brought their signature Perennial sound to the final of four release shows for their fourth album Modernism, released the day prior. Perennial’s live shows are becoming infamous for how lively and chaotic they are, so naturally we had to be on hand to check out all the action.
Up first on the night was sinaloa, the legendary regional post-hardcore band. Sinaloa quietly reunited in 2024 and have played a handful of shows since then, that one of them is an opening gig for Perennial shows how the headlining band’s influence is growing. Sinaloa hasn’t lost a step. Despite not releasing an album since 2008, the band brought their melodic fierceness to a short set and teased a new 7” in the future. Some mixing issues rendered the vocals largely muted, but the band still provided an abrasive opening set. They were followed by Miracle Blood, who provided the bridge between the post-hardcore of sinaloa and the mod type music of Perennial. The band played a raucous set of songs more akin to early hard groups like Thin Lizzy than anything else, with a touch of punk. The band played a number of cuts off their more recent album, 2024’s Hello Hell, including the title track, “Prepare For Breakfast,” and “Pets And Their Owners.” The band was loud, fast and fun, with gleefully animated personalities on stage.
But the members of the Perennial Organization were there for Perennial, who came out after an extremely quick turnaround. The band’s music takes a lot of elements of mod, beat, and ‘60s R&B and updates them through a present-day dance-punk filter. Needless to say, it’s a style of music that translates incredibly well to live sets. Since the band was promoting Modernism, they played multiple cuts off of it, including the title track, “Ready! Steady! Go!” and “What’s New On The Beat Scene?” They also touched songs off their previous two albums, like “Art History,” “Action Painting,” and “Perennial Meets the Wolfman.” A prolonged version of “Up-tight” started with a comical spoken intro, and ended on a slightly bizarre note as frontman Chad Jewett took a moment to address a specific fan and highlight that the inspiration for the song came from Stevie Wonder, not Billy Joel. The band closed the proper set with the riotous new song “Emma Peel” before a brief encore break. After the band left the stage, fans chanted “two more songs,” which led Jewett to quip, “two more songs, do you all have like, three minutes?” The band played an encore consisting of “Perennial In A Haunted House” and “Hippolyta.”
Despite playing music that is extremely loud, fast, and aggressive, Perennial could not be more fun, and this joy comes through in heavy doses in their live sets. Rarely do three people look like they’re having so much fun playing their own songs. Vocalist and electric organist Chelsey Hahn was dancing any moment she wasn’t playing, and drummer Ceej Wolf was having a blast behind the kit. At three separate points, the band left the stage to play in the Deep Cuts crowd, once with Wolf taking a cymbal with her. At the end of the set, Wolf slammed her cymbals against the ground in the crowd. Jewett, who has palpable stage charisma, did a number of spoken-word intros to their songs, and at one point did an a capella segment from “Science Fiction/Double Feature” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Every song Perennial performed was done so with maximum energy, from screamed vocals to guitar windmills. Hahn’s electric organ often ended up against her head, and Jewett’s guitar behind his. The Perennial sound is one of gleeful chaos, and the Deep Cuts devotees ate up every second of it. Perennial’s live shows are pretty unmatched in the area, pumping extreme amounts of sweat and intensity into a short amount of time.
Check out all of Cam’s photos here:
