“Something inside me would like to make my best-ever album,” Peter Perrett said in 2007. “Seeing Johnny Cash doing his best work right at the end, makes me feel like just because I’m old doesn’t mean I’m useless.”
Perrett’s third album The Cleansing is set for release set on 1 November via Domino. His 2017 solo debut How The West Was Won was Perrett’s first album in almost 30 years. The lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist and main songwriter for The Only Ones has a pattern of vanishing from sight which was broken by 2019’s follow-up Humanworld . His third solo album The Cleansing is an ambitious double album comprising 20 songs. Lead single and opening track ‘I Wanna Go With Dignity’ is a tight three minutes and 25 seconds laced with Perrett’s deadpan wit and alarming honesty. A new era, with a new energy, and a new approach. Alongside his trusted team of sons Jamie (guitar / production) and Peter Jr (bass) plus members of his live band, Perrett is assisted by a roster of starry guests including Johnny Marr, Bobby Gillespie, Fontaines D.C.’s Carlos O’Connell and Dream Wife guitarist Alice Go. Perrett’s uniquely narcotic and alluring melodies, gorgeous South London drawl and ravishing rock dynamic now allied to a wider span of musical arrangements and lyrical concerns – touching on themes of art, addiction, ageing, social media and witch trials amongst others. “I know some of the subject matter is death, suicide and depression,” Perrett notes, “but I feel there is an uplifting atmosphere to the album, because I’m obviously enjoying recognising what is going on around me.”
‘I Wanna Go With Dignity’ is dedicated to the late Fiona H Stevenson (AKA Fay Wolftree), and its lyric was part-inspired by the late David Cavanagh, both of whom interviewed Perrett. One of the eight tracks on the album that feature Bobby Gillespie and Carlos O’Connell, Gillespie also appears in the video for ‘I Wanna Go With Dignity’ directed by Douglas Hart. Hart also appears on the album’s title track marking the first time that Gillespie (backing vocals) and Hart (synths / drum programming) have appeared on the same track since The Jesus & Mary Chain days.
“I feel that, the older you get, the more reflective you get,” Perrett says. “I’d always been flippant about the way I approached life, only living in the moment, but then you start to look back at the choices made. I wanted to be more focused about what I wanted to say. I’m still writing about love and the human condition, but perhaps more sentimental, and less abject cynicism, than usual. I also am more focused about the music. Before, I’d put down two guitars, bass and drums, and that was the song: I didn’t give the process much thought. But then we started opening things up.”
With The Cleansing, the saga of Peter Perrett can finally, and irrefutably, move on from his first coming with The Only Ones, one of the most distinctive and charismatic of all new wave bands with a thrilling live reputation. The band thrived from 1976 to 1981, almost despite themselves given the drug consumption of those times, and when they finally imploded, Perrett’s increasing drug habit saw him go to ground. Perrett finally re-emerged in the mid-‘90s fronting The One, a valiant but short-lived effort to recapture former glories, and again when The Only Ones reformed in 2007, though the band only played live and never recorded a new album. Having never done things the easy way, it seemed almost like fate when the pandemic turned up the year after Humanworld was released, and given the precariousness of Perrett’s health, it was only reasonable to expect that he might not record again, and indeed, it was touch and go for a while.
Alongside the album announcement, Perrett has confirmed a special intimate show at London’s Moth Club on 19 October.
Peter Perrett Live Date
Saturday 19 October – Moth Club, London. Tickets here
Please note preordering the album will grant access to the presale.
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