Review Summary: We might as well eat (ourselves).
Peregrine—well,
this Peregrine, at least—is an emo band hailing from Central Massachusetts. They’re not unlike a failing diner that makes the best damn food you’ve ever had but can’t seem to get people in the door. They have no signature dish, no diehard vocal fanbase, minimal social media presence, and a lineup recently downsized out of logistical necessity. Over the past two years, the remaining three members—one vocalist, one drummer, and one guy who does just about everything else—wrote and recorded
The Awful Things We’ve Done, which finally came out last month.
It's
really good.
Admittedly, Peregrine lacking a unique strength is a half-truth; they’re efficient echoers of not just their forefathers’ songwriting prowess, but their elevated passion as well. It’s immediately audible in the blistering opener “A Polite Merlot,” whose Omar Rodriguez-Lopez-esque guitar riffs joust out at a gang chorus of angst and pummeling drums. Twangs of Americana crop up again in “A Room Filled With Bees” and the doomy “Exorcism USA,” the former of which is among many moments here that bring to mind {insert your favorite mid-00s post-hardcore act here}, while the latter contains a drop of blast beats so sinister it could scald the skin off any wannabe “blackened hardcore” act that skips leg day.
For a compact taste of the band’s range, look no further than longest track and lead single “Backpack,” which begins with a Jeff Buckley-soundin’ croon and shapeshifts into a starry-eyed pop punk refrain and a headbang-ready breakdown of rage before bowing out. The off-kilter grooves in “January 24th” offer a gritty side of math, and “The Reply” melds more melodic phrasings and noodley arpeggios—the genre’s bread and butter at this point, but less Olive Garden, more family-owned bistro—into the trio’s repertoire.
The versatility is nice, but it’d be all for naught if the emotion didn’t translate. Thankfully, that isn’t a problem these chefs contend with; Vocalist Nate McKinnon has some of the most impressive chops I’ve heard in a hot minute, summoning an air of dirty filter nostalgia, lurking dread, and responses to the effect of “wow, I’m not even gonna try to hit that note as cleanly as he did” from any attentive listener. His melodies aren’t omnipresent, but when they really soar, like in the climaxes of “The Sixtieth Harvest,” and “Sagittarius A” they form nothing short of goosebump-inducing catharsis, the exact ratio of flex and release you’d want out of an emo singer who can truly fuckin’ sing and isn’t afraid to make it known. Really, the only flop on
The Awful Things We’ve Done comes by way of its feedback interlude “Breathe: Subsist,” whose placement at second in the track list immediately pumps the brakes on an otherwise propulsive introduction.
And that’s the key, I think: you’ve tasted all these flavors before, the seasoning isn’t anything foreign, but classic recipes are just hard to botch, and Peregrine pace out this record like a near-perfect three-course meal of anxiety, despair, and reckoning. It explodes at all the right intervals, keeps your appetite whetted and impressed, but intentionally withholds its absolution until the final bite. In other words, “The Awful Things” is the best closer to grace the genre this side of “Dendron.” Its wailing guitar solo gives amorphous voice to the few things McKinnon can’t; it’s wordless exaltation, and after 45 minutes of tension, the final rallying cry (“No one’s listening anyway. / No one cares at all.”) bypasses triteness entirely and just bulldozes you before receding into an acoustic outro.
Does no one care? Or have they just not heard?
All I know is that for fresh emo served piping hot and with all the right ingredients, I know what restaurant I’m heading back to in 2022, and the place runs on donations. Keep this dilapidated building open and the band making the most of it in good hands.
