Interview with The Perps: ‘Our next song, ‘Bad Way’, is about a tumultuous relationship’

Manchester-based indie/alt rock band The Perps will release their third single, ‘Bad Way’ on 16 October, a pounding, rocky number that’s very guitar driven.

The band comprises Seb Smith (vocals), his cousin Tom Burns (guitar) Arik Ross (bass) and Alex Visinoni (drummer). Smith and Visinoni have been mates since year 7 and ‘Tom found Arik in a pub’, Smith laughed. ‘When he found out he played, he invited him to play with us, but we didn’t even know if he’d show up!’

‘Bad Way’ is ‘a story about a tumultuous relationship’, according to Smith. ‘It’s not autobiographical, it’s just a story I came up with about a couple. She wants to go home, he wants to stay out, he’s a naughty geezer. He’s pissed and playing away from home and at the end, she walks in on him telling his mates about his night. She might whack him one!’ (The line in the song ‘the line you just crossed it, the girl she’s just lost it, smashed him all over the place’ suggests very much that she does!) It is his favourite of their songs to date: ‘It’s a step up from the other two, it’s got a proper story,’ he said.

The central character certainly does sound like a naughty geezer: ‘Jumping the fencing, we’re tops off, we’re tensing, don’t know the town or the street, we stormed in the wedding, the groom kicked my head in, for sweeping the bride off her feet. You’re messing with a man who’s a traitor, a back street debater, he’s out and he’s out for the day.’

Typically, Smith writes ‘the shell of the song’ to bring to the band. ‘We realised playing a few gigs before lockdown that we still needed a big song like this. At our last gig, we opened with it. It was socially distanced, though, so everyone was sitting down, they couldn’t dance. We should get space hoppers for everyone to dance on, although social distancing would go out the window, wouldn’t it?!’

They’ve started filming the footage for the accompanying video, which will likely come out the day before the single. ‘Our mate Sam filmed us wearing these really crazy clothes, so we’ve got Tom as Ginger Spice in a Union Jack top, wearing a wig! My mum’s a childminder, so we raided her dressing up box! It was really fun, it felt liberating because no-one knew it was us, we just told people we were making a documentary,’ he laughed.

‘You imagine this guy strutting along, you know, all arrogant and proud of it!’

‘Walk Like This Now’, their previous single, came out in July, and is less story driven and more about making you feel a certain way, according to Smith. ‘You imagine this guy strutting along, you know, all arrogant and proud of it!’

However, coming up with their name was ‘awful’, he said: ‘It took us months and months. Alex is a geologist and he kept putting in names that were elements in the periodic table. I wanted us to be called The Blue Streaks – and we were for a bit – because an American said it can mean to talk shit, and we thought it could be a reference to sirens as well. Then our manager, my uncle, thought of The Perps as in ‘in perpetuity’, and we decided to go with that!’

Smith is now working on new, character-driven songs. ‘A song I’m doing is a conversation between two old rockers in a pub. I think it’s what they call a concept piece. I’ve written the lyrics but we haven’t even practiced it yet.’

Their next single is likely to be ‘All Puppets, No Strings’, which he describes as ‘slow and ballady’. ‘We ended up recording ‘Bad Way’ in the pub when it was closed,’ he said. ‘We’re now renting a practice room to keep our gear in, so we’d like to record this one there.’

Between them, they have an array of musical influences. Visinoni comes from a metal background: ‘He’s put in a lot of double bass pedal in ‘Bad Way’, we couldn’t stop him,’ Smith laughed. ‘He likes indie stuff, too, though. I like David Gray, which might sound weird as that’s really different to us. I really like the Foo Fighters. My first gig was either the Chili Peppers or Embrace (a West Yorkshire rock band). Tom likes the same as me and Arik likes old rock like AC/DC.’ He’s also a fan of local rock duo The Virginmarys, who he describes as ‘heavyish rock but not too thrashy, just straight up rock ‘n’ roll’.

If he could tour with with anyone, he goes with Foo Fighters and Tenacious D: ‘I love Foo Fighters and I saw a clip of them touring together (last year) where they threw hammers at the wall and I fancy doing that,’ he laughed. ‘If I could sing with someone else, I’d like do something a bit different like hip hop with Gary Clark Jr. (an American musician known for his fusion of blues, rock and soul music with elements of hip hop), just to stand next to him for a bit and suck in a bit of his karma!’

(Photo from left to right: Seb, Alex, Tom and Arik)