French four piece PÆRISH have spent years making beautifully miserable music and somehow turning existential dread into something you can still sing along to. By album four, you’d think they might have worked out how to make adulthood slightly less inconvenient. RITA suggests otherwise.

Produced by longtime collaborator Will Yip, RITA asks what happens when the version of you that needed to make music starts sharing space with bills, distance, memory, exhaustion and all the other deeply unromantic admin that comes with being in a band. The shoe-gaze haze is still there, but it’s been shoved into something heavier, louder and built to hit harder in a room full of people. Across eleven tracks, PÆRISH keep testing how much of that original instinct survives once real life has had years to interfere with it. Let’s break it down.

Prince of Darkness

Nothing says personal growth quite like realising you’ve been wasting years in real life. “Prince of Darkness” kicks RITA open with feedback and drums, before guitars that feel huge without immediately going for the throat join, their hazier edges still unmistakably PÆRISH. The drums give everything a heavier, more deliberate shove forward while the bass sits lower and thicker beneath them, adding weight rather than simply following the guitars. There’s a constant push underneath “Another game I can lose, another stance I can choose,” as though the whole rhythm section is forcing the song forward while the lyrics stay trapped in indecision. Even “It starts to fade, I should know” gets repeated until recognition starts sounding less like wisdom and more like the deeply irritating experience of watching yourself make the same mistakes repeatedly.

Frustration finally turns much uglier with “I’ve been losing years and, I’m losing you now.” Suddenly all those choices at the beginning stop feeling hypothetical; time has already been spent, somebody’s slipping away and the place surrounding them has become “a giant toxic crowd.” The guitars grow denser around that admission, but it’s the combination of the bass filling out the bottom end and the drums hitting with more insistence that makes the song feel like its closing in. Rather than letting everything disappear into a shoe-gaze fog, the rhythm section keeps dragging it back into something physical, giving “Burn it down” the release the rest of the track has been threatening. As an opener, it makes RITA’s obsession with ageing immediately uncomfortable; PÆRISH aren’t asking how to preserve the past so much as what happens when you realise some of it has already faded while you were busy deciding what comes next.

Heal

“Heal” starts with a bass line thick enough to make everything else sound like it’s turning up late. It lands immediately at the front of the track, giving the song a weight “Prince of Darkness” took longer to build towards. The drums lock into that low end rather fighting it, while the guitars gradually spread wider around them, adding grit and haze without swallowing the groove. Even as the arrangement fills out, that bass keeps doing a lot of the heavy lifting, which suits lyrics like “Bet he always says what he means, yeah, I know, he got low self esteem, and it shows.” There’s something almost brutally matter of fact about the way those lines land; less of an emotional breakthrough, more staring directly at the problem and realising it’s been sat there the whole time waiting for you to notice it.

That makes the repeated “Expect to heal, in a matter of time, chances are none” hit particularly hard. Healing is usually sold as the lovely bit that happens if you wait long enough but PÆRISH are considerably less interested in pretending time’s that useful. The song keeps getting broader around that idea; the guitars thicken, the drums hit harder and the vocals start feeling increasingly boxed in by everything surrounding it, while the bass remains a stubborn anchor. By the time “They sent you there, away” appears near the end, “Chances are none” has stopped sounding pessimistic for effect and starts feeling closer to resignation. Two tracks into RITA, getting older is already looking considerably less like gaining perspective and more like finding out some things have absolutely no intention of fixing themselves just because a few years have gone by.

Vapor Cloud

Apparently running away still counts as a coping mechanism if you give it a coastline. The guitars arrive in a hazy wash but there’s more shape underneath them than the title might suggest; the bass gives the song a firm center while the drums keep pressing it forward. That tension fits the opening questions perfectly. “Honest to think that I could change it, How?” and “Holding the line like I could fake it, How?” are immediately undercut by those little responses, as though every attempt at confidence is being heckled by the narrator’s own brain before it has even finished the sentence.

The chorus opens the track out further with the guitars growing broader and the drums hitting with more force around “I am chasing a faded spark, And escaping a vapor cloud.” It’s one of those wonderfully inconvenient PÆRISH moments where the music feels like it’s reaching for release while the lyrics admit they’re mostly running on denial. “Running off to the coast” brings some of RITA’s wider imagery into focus too; there’s no romantic escape waiting there though “Everything will be lost in a second” makes sure of that. What ultimately keeps the song from disappearing completely to defeat is “Yet you pull me out.” For all the talk of fading sparks, prayer no longer working and barely holding the weight together, somebody’s still reaching in, refusing to let the band fully give up. Whether that’s enough to actually save anything is naturally left uncertain.

What You Want

“What You Want” sounds like somebody checking the exits before they’ve even decided whether they’re leaving. The drums come in with a brisker pulse than the previous tracks, pushing forward while the bass keeps everything grounded beneath those wider, blurred guitars. There’s still plenty of PÆRISH haze around the edges, but the arrangement feels more immediate, almost restless, which makes “Could you disappear without, Telling them or anyone” feel less like a quiet fantasy and more like the kind of thought that’s getting dangerously close to becoming reality. The vocals sit right in the middle of that movement, never overly dramatic, letting the repeated “I know it’s too late, And I know what you want” carry its own weary certainty like the argument has already happened enough times to skip straight to the conclusion.

Then comes the rude reminder that feeling young and actually being young stopped being the same thing somewhere along the way, “And you still feel young, But memories are getting old.” It cuts straight into one of RITA’s biggest anxieties but the song doesn’t sit around explaining it. Instead, “decide what name you go by” shifts that discomfort into something more active as though identity is now another thing that has to be consciously chosen rather than simply inherited. All the while, the guitars and rhythm section keep moving without giving the lyrics any extra breathing room, before “This is what living feels like” lands with a thud. Adulthood is partly just realising you’re still becoming someone long after you thought that bit would be over.

Always Assuming

Nobody in “Always Assuming” is winning this argument, saving PÆRISH the trouble of pretending otherwise. The song opens with the drums establishing a firm, steady pulse before the guitars and bass begin widening the arrangement. Rather than exploding into something immediately huge, the track builds itself up gradually giving those first clipped vocal lines plenty of room to land. “Soon, I’ll feel the sun,” “Should, I leave the south,” “Few thoughts, I need to solve” arrive more like pieces of an argument than complete answers. “Always assuming” starts to feel less like an observation and more like an admission that half the damage here is being done by filling in somebody else’s blanks.

That becomes much clearer once “Yeah, I talk, you don’t listen, And you’re drunk with emotions, Cause you talk, I don’t listen” turns the blame both ways. No one gets to be the sensible one, they’re simply two people taking turns at not hearing each other. As the longest track on RITA, “Always Assuming” uses that extra room, letting the full band peter out into a much quieter, drawn out outro that leaves “Tomorrow is in good hands” hanging over the song. It lands less like reassurance and more like something said because silence would probably feel much worse.

Strawberry

There’s something especially cruel about somebody waving goodbye when you haven’t quite left yet. “Strawberry” opens around the image of “the doorway glow,” with the rhythm section keeping things measured while the guitars soften the edges rather than pushing for impact. They blur the space around “I will drive away, But not too far,” making the line feel less decisive and more like somebody already bargaining with their own exit. Even “Deep inside, You know it’s not true” keeps returning like the song’s catching itself out every time it tries to sound certain.

By the time “I step outside, But then you start talking” arrives, leaving has become less of a decision and more something that keeps getting postponed by one more sentence. The guitars stay restrained too, refusing to give the moment some grand dramatic lift, which makes the hesitation feel even more painfully ordinary. Then “Put the bags in the car, Then I’m leaving” finally sounds like action, only for “Years will pass, A hole inside you” to stretch the fallout far beyond the driveway. The song never overplays the goodbye, the vocals are left to sit with the consequences. Maybe the “Strawberry” isn’t about the moment somebody leaves but about the part of them that keeps existing long after the car is gone.

Wait For Dark

“Wait For Dark” opens with the emotional maturity of somebody already drafting the message they definitely shouldn’t send. The guitars come in dirtier and more abrasive than on the previous tracks of RITA, with the bass and drums giving the song a tighter, more confrontational shove. That suits lines like “How petty, I expected nothing less” and “How many lies you think you got left,” which don’t sound interested in reconciliation, choosing to keep score instead. The vocals are treated with distortion throughout, roughening the delivery and making even the calmer lines feel unstable. The effect hits hardest around the repeated “on and on,” where the voice almost starts fighting with the noise surrounding it. Each return of the phrase makes the argument feel less like something being worked through and more like something both sides have been trapped inside for far too long.

The bitterness sharpens further through “How many drinks does it take to forget” and “You sure know it all,” before “And you’re not sorry, Not this time” strips away whatever pretence of apology might have been left. The rhythm section keeps the pressure on while the guitars stay jagged rather than blooming into anything cleaner making “Let it burn” less cathartic than scorched. Then “on and on” returns as the closing lyric, leaving the track without a neat resolution. It ends exactly where it started emotionally; still annoyed, still unresolved, still going.

Crashing In Circles

“You wanna drive, And get away, So safe” sounds simple enough, right up until the rest of the song proves no one involved is that lucky. “Crashing In Circles” comes in tense from the start, the drums pressing hard while the bass gives that opening escape plan more weight than any clean exit deserves. The guitars begin to open up around “Lost in the static,” and from there the whole song starts feeling increasingly wound up. “Crashing in circles” stops sounding like a hook and starts sounding more like a diagnosis for a situation that keeps producing the same bad result. “I should be careful, And less dramatic” only makes that clearer; recognising your own terrible habits isn’t the same thing as actually stopping them.

The song gets noticeably more exposed around “I can’t call you to check, Cause you’re not there,” with the arrangement pulling back enough to leave the vocals sitting uncomfortably close to the surface. Then the guitar solo tears in and suddenly all that built up tension gets somewhere louder to go. Urgent and just messy enough to feel like it’s coming apart in real time, it says everything the lyrics have been failing to get out cleanly. “I’ve got what you need,” is almost embarrassingly obvious; the offer’s still there, the person isn’t. “Crashing In Circles” leaves that care hanging around with nowhere useful to land, which is probably why it cuts deeper than a goodbye would.

Hurry Slowly

“Hurry Slowly” is what happens when impatience develops commitment issues. The song carries that contradiction from the start. There’s movement in the drums and bass, but the guitars keep the edges softer and more suspended, stopping the track from ever feeling like it’s properly breaking loose. That makes “I want to move around, And my hands refuse to wait” feel especially restless, while “There’s a weight in the quiet years, Like I’m speaking to a ghost” pulls everything back towards something older, harder to shake. Even the title phrase starts sounding less clever and more painfully accurate; urgency and hesitation are taking place at the same time.

The later section strips that conflict down even further. “Hey you, Breathe deep, Feel time, Go Slow, Stay near, Don’t Speak, Just Drift, Let go” arrives in short, almost instructional fragments as though the song has finally run out of room for full sentences. For most of that stretch the arrangement stays restrained enough to let each command hang in the air, before there’s a dip and the guitars come crashing back heavier, their more abrasive edge pushing them to the front of the mix. After spending so much of the song suspended between wanting to go and wanting to stay, that late intrusion feels like the restraint finally developing teeth. “Hurry slowly” stops sounding like a contradiction and starts to sound like a warning; you can drag your feet all you like but eventually something’s got to give.

Swamp Monsters of Malibu

For having one of the strangest titles on RITA, “Swamp Monsters of Malibu” has the most emotionally direct approach of the whole album. PÆRISH strip things back almost straight away. The opening feels deliberately sparse, with the vocals given more room than on much of RITA while the guitars sit lightly around instead or rushing to fill in the gap. The bass and drums beging giving the song more shape as the track develops but there’s still an exposed quality around “Complete silence, Do you feel it too?” that makes the question feel uncomfortable. “Hope is always hard, Hard to feel when I’m gone” doesn’t exactly improve matters; by this point, hope is less a reassuring destination and more like something the band keeps losing sight of whenever they’re left alone with themselves.

“Pick me up, Home is where I want to be” gives the song what initially sounds like its simplest answer, only for “Or maybe just, Find me lost on your way out” to make a mess of it. Even asking to be found comes with an escape clause. The guitars gradually gain more weight around that hesitation while the drums push the later section with more urgency without turning it into some enormous triumphant breakthrough. By “Call my name, it’s you, Across the maze I found you,” the song feels like it might be finally reaching for something solid, but the ending refuses to settle. It fades out haunted rather than healed, which feels about right this close to the end of RITA.

Soothe

By the closing track, PÆRISH have finally arrived at the deeply inconvenient possibility that maybe comfort isn’t something to immediately distrust. The vocals arrive filtered and slightly blurred, making “Overthinking now, Always slipping out, Over sharing out loud, Always sinking down” sound like thoughts being caught halfway between saying them and trying to take them back. The drums and bass stay controlled underneath while the guitars hold back from turning the closer into some giant final release which leaves that altered vocal exposed enough for every little hesitation to show.

That matters once “The pain was deeply stronger than your love” gives way to “The fear is wearing off when you talk.” The shift is a small blink and you’ll miss it moment, but that’s exactly why it works so well. After an album full of leaving, doubling back, miscommunication and carrying too much around, PÆRISH don’t suddenly become enlightened in the final three minutes. “I could let you soothe me, Let you soothe me” is still tentative, and the vocal effect keeps it that way, softening the line without making it feel completely settled. Comfort is finally being allowed in, just not without being thoroughly inspected first.

Final Thoughts

Across RITA, PÆRISH spend eleven tracks making adulthood look like a series of badly labelled exists. The album’s heavier edges, thicker low end and sharper dynamics give all that uncertainty somewhere physical to live, while the softer moments stop it from becoming eleven variations on emotional blunt force. By the time “Soothe” arrives, the point isn’t that anything has been solved; it’s that PÆRISH still sound like a band with enough nerve left to keep pushing parts of themselves they haven’t quite figured out yet.

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French alt-emo band PÆRISH have released their new album RITA out now via SideOneDummy. The album was produced by Grammy-winning producer Will Yip and includes the singles “Wait For Dark”, “Vapor Cloud”, “What You Want” and “Heal”.

PÆRISH is composed of Mathias Court (guitar/vocals), Frédéric Wah (guitar), Martin Dupraz (bass), and Loïc Fouquet (drums). The band is signed to SideOneDummy Records and have released the albums ‘Semi Finalists’ (2026), ‘Fixed It All’ (2021) and ‘You're In Both Dreams (And You're Scared)’(2023), available for streaming. Both albums received significant critical acclaim and put them on the radar, both at home and in the US, that few French rock bands can claim to have experienced. Combined, the three albums that have been released have accrued over 25 million streams, and the band have toured or played shows with Silversun Pickups, Sum 41, Teenage Wrist, PUP, Alkaline Trio, Movements, Tigers Jaw and Superheaven.

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