Grent Perez

His new album, Backflips In A Restaurant, is, of course, the primary subject of our chat. The album, a varied soundscape of musical and thematic elements, includes focus singles “Dandelion” with fellow Australian Ruel and the surrealistic “Fuzzy Feeling” with Amsterdam-based songwriter and producer Benny Sings. Rounding out the tracklist is a horde of new songs, including the standouts “Girl at the Station,” “Falling For A Friend,” “Everest,” and “Reason Why.” “Girl at the Station” is particularly captivating across the board, with lovestruck lyrics, shimmering sonic aesthetics, and impressive vocal tenderness merging to form a genuine old-school love song. These sweeping artistic gestures, in this tune and others, are guided by his long-time interest in and affection for anime. He tips his hat to the medium, suggesting that an individual's emotional framework may be positively influenced by the stories being told: “There might be just a wave of hopeful romantics instead of hopeLESS romantics. I don’t know if it’s just because of social media…because we get to see so much of the world while we’re at home. It makes us…eager to experience something.”

While speaking to grentperez, his humour, tone, lightheartedness, and acute awareness are textbook Gen Z. We talk about his process, artistic come-up, vocal health, and song meanings, all while he is eminently animated using hand gestures and a dramatised tone to cement his point. This kind of spirited demeanor was best represented as he spoke of his earliest experiences with the fantastical: “I used to dream quite a lot and played a lot of games where I’d be like, Ohmygawd, that’d be SO SICK if THAT happened!!” Backflips In A Restaurant is a title that evokes immediate visual and emotional cues; it feels full of life and spirit, two words that also may describe him best.

Backflips In A Restaurant is out now.

Hello! How are you?
I’m great! Yourself?

I’m good! You have been jet-setting a lot recently, haven’t you?
I have been! It’s exciting! [laughs heartily]

And then, I’m sure you have a tour that you’ll be heading out for, and doing more of that, right?

Yep! In April, I’m going to be in the US for just about three months. There are about thirty-five shows, I think. I’m excited…I’m keen.

I was watching your interview with Rob from Front Row Live, and you were talking about how you started a previous tour a little under the weather vocally because you were having a little too much fun before it…
[laughs and takes a sip of water]

Are you going into this one with a different mindset?
Oh yeah! You have to. Definitely.

Outside of the self-induced trumpets that you do…the orchestrations and arrangements in your songs are really polished. I feel like they’re arranged by someone who knows the hows and whens of how to amplify that kind of thing in a song. Are you able to hear that stuff when you’re writing a song, or does that come later for you?
Yeah, as it’s being produced, I’ll pick up on certain string sections and orchestral sections. I’ll point out a rough idea, really poorly, then chat about it and see how we can move on to make it more polished. But yeah, I’ll definitely hear it in the writing process.

How involved are you in the physical playing or the digital execution of instrumentation in the recording process?
I like to say I’m pretty hands-on. More often than not, it will be just me putting down the rough idea and shipping it off to be more refined. [laughs]

Do you, or have you ever, considered yourself to be a bedroom pop, indie, or alt artist?
Yeah! I think so. The term ‘bedroom pop’ is so broad. It’s so diverse. Some people… don’t like it?? But, I don’t see why not! It’s so sick to be titled that. Making stuff from your bedroom is so cool. That’s how I started.

So, because you do consider yourself that, how do you then correlate the music you’re making at home, or in a hotel room, to a record and then to physical musicians, since your stuff does apply to being played live and with other people?

Differing the song from production to live is always so interesting. Those cute little clicky noises that sound so good in your earphones…sometimes they don’t fully translate onto the live stage. So, you have to find other ways to get around it. I work with my musical director, who is also my bassist and guitarist, Timmy, for all my live gigs, and we meet up, get on calls, and see what we can tweak to beef up a lot of these songs because the live performance is important. I want to make sure that the feeling of the song is really strong when you hear it live. So, more often than not, we’re trading little clicky noises for real drums, and adding more drums and buildup moments. For “Fuzzy Feeling,” there’s a huge buildup moment at the end, instead of what it is in the recording. It’s really cool.

Artists like yourself, Steve Lacy, and Sebastian Schub possess this old-school sense of musicality and a new-school sense of releasing these songs. Other than algorithmic luck, what do you feel is the key to being an artist of that ilk at this time?

It’s an interesting question here because there’s just so much music out there. There are so many artists. I’m just part of the bloody system at this point. If I had to pin it down on something…[pauses and sighs] as cliché as it is, it really does help to be able to be yourself nowadays. I feel like the whole wave of, “I’m a mysterious artist, this is me onstage and that’s all you’ll ever see of me,” and whatnot is…kind of dying? I don’t know if it’s a good thing necessarily, but it’s working for me. I think because social media is so present, people just want to know more about you. Sometimes, if you’re not there to give them that, people don’t like it. I don’t know. I’m figuring it out.

Then there’s someone like mk.gee, who has that old-school mentality of, “I don’t want to give you everything, so here’s the stuff I’m putting out, it’s going to speak for itself.” So, maybe, once in a while, we can get someone like that.
I think that’s a really sick thing. Sometimes, the music really does just speak for itself. I think I’m finding my way to navigate the industry. Ideally, I’d like for the music to speak for itself, but I don’t think I’m there yet.

Are you at all influenced by any iteration of neo-soul?
I would say, subconsciously, I’m super super fascinated by that genre. Growing up, I listened to a lot of D’Angelo. I listened to Musiq Soulchild…

[nods head vigorously] Yeahhh!
…[There are] some newer artists I bump into quite a lot, like Hiatus Kaiyote. They are also Australian and SO good. I don’t think I’ve fully taken the jump into that genre just yet. I’m scared to take the leap, but I’m definitely influenced.

Would you say it’s more contemporary R&B stuff, like late 2010s Daniel Caesar, that you’re doing?
Yeah, I’d say that’s kind of the safe play. It’s ear candy in a way.

We talked a bit before about being vocally healthy on tour. How do you handle off nights? How do you work around these songs that are melodically difficult to get through?
Rehearsing it is really good. Confidence helps when a song is really hard. You don’t want to have to think about it too much on the spot. BUT, at the same time, it helps to practice alternative melodies. Instead of going up to THIS NOTE, [flips up into his head voice] you kind of go somewhere in the middle and run off, and it’s still somewhat impressive even though it’s the ‘live version.’ Having those little backup moments CAN help, but ideally, you want to have the song as is.

A lot of indie listeners get caught up in the web of the whimsical ‘what-ifs’ of a song. Like, “What if we were to dance in the rain?” “What if it were you and I?” Songs like “Falling For A Friend” and “Girl At The Station” lend themselves to that. What strikes you about that kind of writing?
The way I treat music writing right now, and the way I’ve treated it for a while, is that I’ve thought of myself as being THE DIRECTOR of a MOVIE!! Movies didn’t exist before the director and the writer came to be; they bloody conceptualised it. That’s what I’m trying to do with my writing. With “Girl At The Station” and “Falling For A Friend,” those are pretty heavily influenced by anime moments. Anime is the most fantasy you can get. “Girl At The Station” is inspired by an anime called Your Name. I guess I just grew up with that kind of fantasy element in my life. I used to watch a lot of cartoons. I used to dream quite a lot. I played a lot of games where I’d be like, ‘Ohmygawd, that’d be SO SICK if THAT happened!!’ I guess that has made its way into my songwriting.

Why do you think young adult listeners are so keen on those moments?
There might be just a wave of hopeful romantics instead of hopeLESS romantics. I don’t know if it’s just because of social media…because we get to see so much of the world while we’re at home. It makes us…eager to experience something. Laufey, for example, talks about these really emotional, fantasy, beautiful, “Person On The Train” moments, which are similar to “Girl At The Station”! People are so drawn to that.

You have songs on this project that have a bit of a waltz vibe, you have one with a Spanish guitar-type thing going on, and you do the Y2K hip-hop thing on “2DK.” Are you ever hesitant to give the listeners too many slices of cake on one project?
I think this is the biggest mixed bag that I’ve ever done. Already, it was very nerve-wracking. I just wanted to dive straight into it. I wanted to show the people what I thought I was capable of. I think music should still be fun. As an artist and a creative person, I think my duty is to experiment with who I am as an artist and a person, so that’s exactly what I’m meant to do. How will people take it? I’m willing to find out.

How does that hodgepodge of everything you’re talking about apply to the title of the album, Backflips In A Restaurant? To me, that title reflects the initial butterflies in a new relationship. Feeling like you COULD do a backflip in a restaurant, or dance in the rain with an umbrella in New York.
That’s an awesome take. That’s not what I’ve done. [laughs] My personal take is akin to that. From the jump, a backflip is…chaotic, whereas a restaurant is, usually, a calm experience. It’s kind of that juxtaposition between chaotic and calm. There’s the whole notion of the restaurant, as well. A restaurant is the home of many different flavours. That takes place within the music as well. There are thirteen tracks within the first iteration of the album, and each one of those tracks is almost a different genre. It’s like you’re sifting through a menu of food and experiencing all these different flavours. That’s my basic taste on the title, but I think that’s what is so cool about art and music… it IS subjective.

How did you get Ruel, another artist who, from a young age, understood how to translate old-soul mannerisms and musicality and aesthetics into his music, to work on “Dandelion”?
I’m very fortunate that we became friends in the last two years or so. I wrote “Dandelion” and felt like it was missing something…it wasn’t quite there. I was talking to my manager about that, and he had the idea to put on my newly found friend Ruel, and I was like, “Oh wow, you’re a genius!! This is so smart!!” Especially having two Aussies on there is SO cool. Despite the height difference, we both come from the same place.

He’s SO tall.
He’s SOOOO tall. He absolutely killed that track.

It’s like a chill version of “Supalonely” by BENEE and Gus Dapperton.
Yeah! That’s such a good song. Thank you. I’ll take that riff.

What are you hoping fans take away from this record, and what do you hope it’ll do for YOU when you go out on the road to play it every night?
One thing I hope for people to take from it is the experience itself. I’d like for them to really see the different sides of music or MY music. If they haven’t heard of these certain genres, I’m happy to show them. I also just want to showcase my versatility as an artist. For the live thing…I DON’T KNOW!! Every time I have a live show, I just always want to have a lot of fun. I’m looking to do a really cool restaurant-themed set for it. But the music has its highs and lows, and I think it’s really important to have that dynamic. So, how that pans out is to be determined.

If you could describe the relationship you have with your fans in one word, what would it be?
This word has always been used about me and my fanbase, and I think I agree with it: Wholesome. It’s a very wholesome interaction. I don’t know if it’s because of the way that I’ve presented myself, or whatnot, but when people come to talk to me, they are very kind and polite, and it feels like I’m just talking to a friend.