Interview with Ryan Perras of The Atom Age

The Atom Age are an Oakland-based garage punk band that dole out fuzz-drenched, funk-indebted anthems in pint-sized bursts of energy. Formed in 2009, The Atom Age has slowly expanded their sound to encompass decades of high-energy pop, taking as much inspiration from Link Wray’s surf rock as from the early garage rock of The Sonics. Their upcoming August 23 release, Cry ‘Til You Die, glides by with a self-assuredness that oozes through every one of its slinky basslines, every distorted yelp and scream, and each pummeling riff—the garage punk that The Atom Age offer here rarely relents, and it never loses its sense of power. 

I had the opportunity to ask Ryan Perras—the man behind the gritty and powerful voice at the center of many of Cry ‘Til You Die’s electrifying 25 minutes—some questions about The Atom Age’s upcoming record, in addition to questions about the band’s history.

Orpheus Review: You’ve been making music as The Atom Age for ten years now, and pretty much since the start you’ve worked with a garage punk sound heavily influenced by R&B and punk music coming from the ‘60s. How would you say you arrived at that sound? Do you think your influences have changed over the years?

Ryan Perras: We were drawn to the early garage rock stuff because it's so high energy and feels so fun. I think it's always been a little underrepresented in Rock 'N' Roll so it made sense to dive into it and snag the pieces we loved, like having an organ and sax by default. I think our influences have progressed somewhat, but we haven't been able to shake our love of early primitive Rock 'N' Roll. I think no matter what we do ourselves we still need to have an energy going that feels like our early influences.

Cry 'Til You Diewas produced by Dave Schiffman, whose résumé is altogether pretty impressive. What was it like working with Schiffman? Did working with him change your songwriting process at all?

It was awesome working with him. He's a true pro that has limitless advice and experience. We learned and grew a lot as band making the album with him. He jumped in to produce and engineer this record early on so we had a lot of time to work on songs with him. He understood that a band like us needs to tour on their new material, gauge crowd reaction, and play the songs live every night. He would have us demo songs, critique them, and then we'd do a tour playing them. It became apparent really quickly what was weak and what songs were slamming. It all resulted in the best album we've ever made and made it incredibly easy to record. 

What recent music have you all been listening to? Has anything released recently played a significant role in your own songwriting?

Some recent stuff that has been talked about in the van has been Hot Snakes new one, IDLES, The Bronx V, The Hives’ new singles. I think recent records do play a role in songwriting, but I'm never sure how significantly. I think if something new strikes us we'll use that as some inspirational juice and end up making our own bastardized thing. 

Last month you played a run of shows in California with NOBODY’S BABY, another Bay Area band. Obviously, you have members in common with NOBODY’S BABY, but how much interaction do you see between yourselves and other bands in the Bay Area? In your ten years together have you seen a dominant Bay Area music scene come together at all?

The Bay Area music scene is pretty amazing. We are always kind of in a state of shock over how deep it goes. There are so many genres that have healthy scenes here that it’s honestly hard to keep track. As for similar sounding bands, I always feel like it’s close knit and that you recognize just about everyone in your particular scene which is really nice. I'm not sure if there's a particular dominant genre happening right now in the Bay, there's always a lot of different bands killing it from around here, but I could be biased! 

Cry ‘Til You Die is out August 23; you can find the two singles “Walk Through Walls” and “Never Looking” here.