One thing that got me was the way 23-year-old Alma June’s hands fidgeted in the YouTube video while she sat in a control room and described how she fell in love with music as a lonely teen and got the chance to record her debut album with her band, The Persian Cats, in a professional recording studio in Falmouth last year. That this young woman from Portland was a little nervous was touching, because Alma June has the world at her feet and she doesn’t know it yet.
Let’s start with her voice, a unique jazz instrument of impressive range, fluidity, power and expressiveness. In the spirit of jazz, Alma June heeds no rules when she sings, yet her control is complete as she navigates the serpentine melodies she and the group have cooked up. Here in Maine, there is no comparable voice to hers. Here on Earth, likewise.
Next, her writing — also sublime. As Alma explains in that video, her “target audience” for this album is young women like herself who’ve escaped toxic relationships. Her lyrics detail this experience with a blend of poetry, observation, confession, spite, humor and sagacity. The beguiling construction, “What gives, what-the-fuck receives,” are the first words out of her mouth on the opener, “Mary.” “I wore a short skirt / I was something to own,” she bitterly remarks later in this song.
“Bite your tongue and endure the violence / This love is late on rent,” Alma sings on the second single, “Willows Weep,” for which the band made a video. Drugs, drinking and dread run through all 10 tracks, but the perspective is that of a triumphant survivor, not a victim. And only 23…
Alma also plays classical guitar and breaks rules with impunity on this instrument too. She and the band keep tossing proggy wrenches into the gears of their otherwise elegant compositions. Songs seem to fall apart and die, as “Mary” does in a weirdly backwards way at the end, while others, like “Perpetual Care Fee,” resurrect themselves. Their music is highly original and intriguingly unpredictable.
The atmosphere is like a fever dream, thick with Scott Barber’s “neo-romantic viola stylings” (as their bio describes his playing) and an alternately mournful and rousing horn section comprised of trombonist David Hession (who also plays the Chinese xiao flute) and saxophonist Jorge Allen. The rhythm section of drummer Dravyn Cloutier and Matthew Nelson on upright bass keeps this vertiginous ship from foundering while Nicholas Rhodes weaves guitar notes with Alma’s.
Why else is Alma June destined for greatness? Fidgeting aside, that YouTube video reveals her passion, poise, humility and wisdom. “Lifting up marginalized groups is an act of resistance,” she said. “Music and storytelling is relatable. It builds this empathy for other people and makes our community stronger.”
The other thing that got me: all the people in our community who’ve helped Alma and the Cats achieve this much thus far, starting with one of her mom’s coworkers, who gave 10-year-old Alma their classical guitar, and her dad, who hipped her to alternative acts like The Magnetic Fields and Lana Del Rey. In the video, she goes on to express appreciation for her music teachers at Portland Arts & Technology High School, one of whom, Ethan Woodman Fowler, deftly engineered and produced this knotty record. The other, Victoria Stubbs, is vice president of the local nonprofit Equal Measure Arts, which helps young people learn how to professionally record and engineer audio.
Alma and most (if not all) of the current band members attended the University of Southern Maine. The opportunity to play live on “Local Motives,” the long-running show on USM’s community radio station, WMPG, was huge for this group, which formed to compete in a Battle of the Bands organized by the station. They won, of course. Sam Monaco, who leads Equal Measure Arts and runs the studio behind his house in Falmouth where they made this album, heard them on “Local Motives” and helped make their first record a reality.
Now it’s up to us locals to help lift them to the next level of success. Listen to this amazing album and tell your coolest friends about it. Go their shows. Check out their website and videos. Buy one of their “locally sourced” t-shirts and wear it around town. Maybe sleep in it, too — they’re “very soft,” they say.
And when you next see Alma interviewed, perhaps on one of the big late-night shows after she and the band have played a song, or on the red carpet outside some fancy awards show, remember how her hands were a little fidgety before she reached the top, and how giving a young musician a hand up can make all the difference in the world.
The band’s website is almajuneandthepersiancats.com.
