*clever, huh
The first time I heard Elvis Perkins I was working the opening shift at Starbucks (yep, at 4:30am), and I fell in love. His “While You were Sleeping” came over the loud speakers, and halfway through my manager changed the song because she couldn’t handle the operatic voices over trumpets that starting blaring five minutes in – while still at 4:30 in the morning.
But I was hooked. I hunted down, and became obsessed with, his first album Ash Wednesday, the haunting tribute to his deceased parents, which documented amongst other things, his mother’s tragic death while a passenger on the ill-fated American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the World Trade Center’s twin towers. Standouts besides WYWS include the title track “Ash Wednesday” and “All the Night Without Love.”