PER SE Sunday, Oct. 28

[October 24th, 2007] [QUIRK POP] When she performs as Per Se, Anne Adams is not afraid to get her audience’s attention—whether it’s by striking up a conversation (“Did you guys find parking OK?” she asked the crowd at this year’s PDX Pop Now! festival) or by wearing homemade wings. “Really, it’s that I can’t handle rejection,” Adams says. “I can’t practice up and put on a pretty dress and then get rebuffed. I can’t. I’ll cry.” Sometimes she really does cry onstage, as she did during the last song of a recent Mississippi Pizza set—but when she does, it’s because she’s just that into what she’s singing.

Per Se’s been around since 2002, first as a solo project, then a band, and now as a looping, pedal-augmented solo act. But in each stage of its life, Per Se (which recently finished its debut) has acted as a vehicle for Adams’ quirky, charming pop songs—as well as her quirky, charming personality. Standing tall at 5-foot-10, the 28-year-old blonde has lived in Florida, Walla Walla and Anacortes. And when she lists her similarly scattershot odd jobs of yore (which include driving one of those cars that advertise energy drinks), Adams declares, “Don’t look at me like that! I have an English degree!”

But Per Se songs are less things Adams writes than things that happen to her. “My subconscious makes songs without me,” she says. “When things around me are quiet, I hear melodies...as if they’re playing on a distant radio.” Sometimes those melodies come with lyrics; other times Adams says she’ll only hear the chorus, thus crafting songs around a single line like “the flapjack devilfish flies again.” Many of Per Se’s older songs, on the other hand, were born of self-imposed writing challenges. “Adelaide,” for instance, came from trying to start each line with the last phrase of the previous one. The result is syncopated, lovely tongue twisters like, “Adelaide sits and eats her fries and shake/ But she can’t shake the thought that astronauts are watching her with eyes of blue/ Blue as ice that will encase the next Ice Age/ And ages later tapes and microfiche are all that’s left of me and you.”

Adams describes her music as “slightly hypnotic, slightly seditious and extremely melancholy”—though she may be overstating the “extremely” part. “And it’s pretty,” she adds. “But that’s beside the point.” Most of all, Anne Adams would like you to pay attention to her. And you really should. She’s great.