On the song “Paints Her Nails”, Michael explains, “To the extent any Caribbean song is about anything, "Paints Her Nails" is about Eva Braun.” Kentoff continues, “I was watching a documentary recounting the last hours of her life: she wears Hitler's favorite dress (black with white roses around the neck), does her hair, paints her nails. I just thought that captured an odd little detail for someone who knows she's about to die in a dark, dank, claustrophobic, industrial green-colored bunker. Making sure her nails are right and that she goes out on as close to her terms as she can. I don't think of her as honorable, but there is a strange, vain kind of bravery inherent in always putting your best foot forward even when it's toward the grave.” The single and upcoming album, Don't Go, were recorded in 2021 at The National Crayon Museum, Washington, DC, and mixed by Chad Clark.
“Paints Her Nails” is out August 26th on Brooklyn label Declared Goods.
PRESS
These songs are for real, but they’re not about disappointment, or complacency, or shame, or attention, or glee. They’re about themselves. Without ironic distance, such oblique experiments can seem exhausting. But only on the giving end: it takes a humble and prolific writer, some cunning musicians, a very patient engineer, and an overarching commitment to self-censorship to pull an album like this off. • PITCHFORK
It’s a masterpiece, tucked away in and revealing the crowded streets and quiet record stores of the District. • DCIST
They’re taking Brill Building songs and writing them in invisible ink, turning jazz standards into Twilight Zone episodes, turning folk songs into clouds of fog. • POPMATTERS
They walk out of step with prevailing pop-culture trends and fashions. Yet they’re making some of the most interesting and multi-faceted music that exists right now. Operating on the fringes, they’re nonetheless capturing essential dilemmas of our time, and doing so through the musical equivalents of quandaries, rumors, and whispers. To the band, the listener, the songs’ characters, and the instruments themselves, Discontinued Perfume is an exciting exercise in unlocking the puzzle that is the world around us. 9/10 • POPMATTERS
The Caribbean’s Discontinued Perfume is a subtle masterpiece. • WASHINGTON POST
The band’s songs are weird, self-contained universes, jewel-box vignettes about artists and spies and lovers. • WASHINGTON CITY PAPER
lyrics
LYRICS
No passageway
No unmarked car
Or ocean escape
Sky rooms can’t be industrial green
Under the southwest flue
She paints her nails
No sight of the street again
Look: everybody knows it’s here
It doesn’t try to disappear
Eye shadow is sensibly applied
Ground taxi
Or cross-wind travel
To name only two
Alphabetize in a file
Sifting through strings & dreams
She paints her nails
Who cares? The Telex is dead!
Who here’s a civil engineer?
Strange virus fills the biosphere
Dazzling the secretarial pool
Calm, loyal – every last molecule
Exorcise memories of Catholic school
Over the retaining wall
Well, every sentry crackles in
The sound of artificial skin
credits
released August 25, 2022
CREDITS
The single and upcoming album, Don't Go, were recorded in 2021 at The National Crayon Museum, Washington, DC, and mixed by Chad Clark.
Michael Kentoff: vocals, guitar
Dave Jones: guitar
Matthew Byars: drums, sound processing
They’re taking Brill Building songs and writing them in invisible ink, turning jazz standards into Twilight Zone episodes, turning folk songs into clouds of fog.
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