“Since I was 10, my teachers asked my parents if I smoked!” Pem is trying to explain where her enthralling, vibrato-rippling voice comes from. Pem (short for Emily Perry) always had a husky tone, and while training to be a therapist after her degree she began to put what she calls her “loose larynx” to work, recording the gripping, emotional music she’d been playing at London open mic nights.
Growing up in Berkshire, she wasn’t surrounded by creative communities, but at 13 taught herself guitar so she could cover Elliott Smith, Joni Mitchell, Laura Marling and write her own material. Perry also draws, dances and writes fiction alongside her day job as a gardener, occasionally pausing to voice-note a melody or snippet of song before it evaporates. “I look a bit mad when I’m doing it with a pair of secateurs in hand,” she concedes.
Madness’s reward is music such as her second EP, Cloud Work, a beautiful five-track set released this summer, about her relationship with her much-missed dad. He died after a long illness in 2022, and Perry found it cathartic – and surprisingly easy – to memorialise him in song. Lead single Awe is a shiveringly brilliant example of her skill in creating pocket sketches, full of feeling without being overspecific, meaning always present yet forever slipping out of reach. Pem’s latest track, Ellipsis, is another excellent showcase for her home counties Eartha Kitt croon.
Cloud Work is out now. Pem tours the UK with WH Lung from 16 November
