Our lives are measured by memory. Those moments that shift the space around you, pointing to a new door or a new face, changing the shape of what you thought you knew. They make up the neighborhood where we stroll past the challenges overcome, the comedy of errors, a hairpin bend and a learning curve or two. Ten years ago, Carmen Perry moved to Philadelphia with her band Remember Sports, fresh out of college and intent on creating art and music, no matter how tricky that path may be. Since then, her life has unfolded in ways she never expected, and it’s on her latest solo album Eyes Like A Mirror that Perry explores the people and places that make up the person she now sees reflected back at her. 

These songs stretch for miles, collecting the blurred colors and souvenirs that coalesce into the collage of her life. Some were written in 2015, when Perry’s uncertainty in a new city overwhelmed her every day, while others were crafted in recent years, shrinking time into a palm-sized totem. “It felt right to be lost,” she says of those initial years in Philadelphia. “My life doesn’t look like what I thought it was going to look like, but I’ve come to realise I really do need other people around me.” That’s the magic of looking for answers: you may never find the ones you’re expecting, but the ones you need may just reveal themselves. “I keep thinking every feeling is forever” she sings on opener ‘Wonderful,’ before declaring “I’m feeling nothing like before,” on the album’s second track ‘Glimmer.’ Truths start to crystalize, and a new face comes into focus.

Eyes Like A Mirror was produced by Perry and co-produced by Friendship drummer and Dear Life Records co-founder Michael Cormier-O’Leary, and audio engineer Lucas Knapp (Friendship, Hour, Florry). Cormier O’Leary & Knapp also play throughout the LP, as well as a plethora of friends and collaborators: Remember Sports members Catherine Dwyer and Jack Washburn; 2nd grade’s Peter Gill; Friendship’s Jon Samuels and Boosegumps’ Heeyoon Won. It was mastered by M Deetz, who has completed works for the likes of Fust and 22º Halo. Perry’s songs are an ode to community and of seeing yourself through others, and it’s by working with those who have been close to her all these years, that she was able to fully step into her own sonic tapestry. There are flourishes of folk, and open-window harmonies; scratchy crescendos and bright, Spring-sweet melodies. 

‘Readjust’––the first song Perry wrote as a resident of Philadelphia––mimics her apprehension with strolling, sidewalk-staring strums and a clamorous, kaleidoscopic chorus. Other voices join like peripheral conversations, while a distorted, chaotic guitar outro resembles the anxiety of taking the next step. “I get car sick on the way back home again,” she sings during the first verse, the yellow lines on the road never staying still long enough to form the foundation she is so eagerly seeking. The acoustic-country tones of ‘Not Today’ ruminate on the tricky territory of self-reflection: wishing you were a different person, feeling frustrated at your past mistakes, and the toll that takes on your mental health, while album closer ‘Pictures,’ bursts through with a path to move forward. As Perry describes taking down the photographs of a loved one, and of ‘wanting the whole world’ but being unsure of what to do with it, ‘Pictures’ speaks of the growth it takes to step away from what you know. 

Eyes Like A Mirror examines the infinite paths we could take, and the outstretched hands of the people we find along the way. It’s an ode to leaning into these different versions of ourselves, and the turmoil it can take to unfurl our fullest potential. It’s learning things the hard way and feeling gratitude for making it through. Perry has crafted a collection of songs that feel like the weathered edges of a photograph housed in a wallet, or a years-old voicemail from a friend, laughing at some dumb inside joke you can barely remember the context of. Comfort, regret, joy and instability coexist without friction, because without the pains of taking a wrong step, or the space to celebrate how far you’ve come, the reflection in the mirror might never change.