The Band Perry Are Saying Goodbye to Country Music With New ‘Coordinates’ EP
The Band Perry took a turn from their country sound after their last album, 2013's Pioneer, infusing pop and electronic sounds into singles such as "Live Forever" and "Stay in the Dark" before disappearing entirely from the music scene, leaving even their social media pages dark for a period of time. Now, though, the sibling trio is back -- and they're officially no longer country.
On Friday (Sept. 21), the Band Perry will release a five-song EP, Coordinates, that Variety describes as "unapologetically electronic." Siblings Reid, Neil and Kimberly Perry worked with legendary producer Rick Rubin on project; they'd previously paired with him for an entire album, which was shelved by their previous label, Big Machine Label Group's Republic Nashville.
Pioneer was the last album the Band Perry released with BMLG, before signing briefly with Interscope Records; they've since launched their own label, Artrat, on which they will release Coordinates. The band says their hiatus from the limelight was necessary to recreate themselves as pop stars.
"We’re just so proud of everything that we’ve spent the last little while building ... I think the other pervasive feeling is freedom to put out music in the way that we’ve always desired to — not just the sound of it, but even the construction how to get it out quickly and directly to the folks whose ears we’re reaching for” Kimberly Perry tells Variety. “I think so much of the dark period, if you will, was time spent constructively, and I really feel like everybody’s going to love it.”
Kimberly Perry says she and her brothers were listening to "a lot of very minimal but big sounds" while creating Coordianates -- "a lot of German electronic music," she adds, as well as Kanye West's Yeezus album.
"I think that the sound on the project is sort of like minimal brutalism — which, yes, was absolutely what we were feeling in our lives," she adds. "It was like, yeah, there’s some brutal things happening, but we’re all just moving toward simplicity and impact.”
Perry recently went through a divorce, on top of the upheaval that the band has experienced in recent years.
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