In the religious world, Rita is the patron saint of desperate and impossible causes. Pærish singer/guitarist Mathias Court grew up being able to see a church named after her from his childhood home, and still can whenever he returns there. Though he’s not religious, his mother is, and she raised him “with the feeling of being protected by this church.” As such, the name of this fourth Pærish full-length is steeped in personal meaning for him. But it doesn’t just relate to his youth—it also ties in to the struggles that come with being in a band.
“I suggested this name to the boys,” explains the singer, “because I felt it was very Pærish and very emo talking about the sacrifices of being in an indie alt-rock band. We’re so happy to be doing a fourth album, and we've done some incredible tours, but every time it's also a lot of work and a lot sacrifice. It's not always easy.” 

In addition to that, Court says that writing this record rekindled a specific feeling he’d had when he was younger. For him, the process felt a lot more impulsive than it had been for 2023’s You’re In Both Dreams (And You’re Scared), and brought him back, in more ways than one, to that childhood home, and that view of the church—and everything that came with it.
“When I was writing these songs,” he says, “it was such a different feeling from the previous album. That one was more sad and intellectual, because it was written during COVID when we were staying at home. This new one was more free, and many of the songs reminded me of that feeling I had when I was teenager and my biggest dream was to become a songwriter. So it’s also a tribute to the person that I was back then who really wanted to write songs.”

Together with the rest of the band—guitarist Frédéric Wah, bassist Martin Dupraz and drummer Loïc Fouquet—Court’s tribute to his former self also shows how far that teenager’s dream has come. Formed in 2015 when Court was in film school with Dupraz, Pærish released their debut album, Semi Finalists, the following year. Heavily inspired by both American movies and American alternative rock, it set the band apart in their home country, where—at the time at least—guitar music wasn’t particularly popular. It also caught the attention of SideOneDummy Records, who signed the band and have been releasing their records ever since. 

Fixed It All came out in 2021, followed by the aforementioned You’re In Both Dreams… a couple of years later. 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. They’ve also become great friends with their dream producer, Will Yip, who mastered the first album and produced the next two. He was also behind the desk for this one—the band recorded it over the course of an intense month at the producer’s brand new studio in downtown Philadelphia, even spending Christmas and New Year’s away from their homes and their families. 

The result is an album that crystallizes who Pærish are, but also further evolves their sound. Partly, that’s due to the fact that the band really shaped these songs—unlike those on You’re In Both Dreams…—to be played in front of a live audience. It also solidified the current line-up and the very evident creative connection they have.
“We toured so much on the last album,” explains Dupraz, “but it's not an album designed to be played live. We love it and we love to play the songs live, but if you want to make people jump or if you're opening for a big act and you want people to go crazy, it's not a good album for that. We were like, 'We want people to jump! Why don't they jump?!' And I think that Rita was the perfect answer to that. We want people go crazy, and this the perfect album for that.”
It also allowed Fouquet—who joined the band just before the started recording that previous record—to make his mark on the album.
“He embraced his impact on the chemistry we have as players, not just as friends,” says Wah, “and that translated way more onto the album than the previous one. So it definitely helped us a lot.”
“On the last record,” adds the drummer, “I jumped in like three months before the recording so I didn't really have time to put my own playing style in the songs. This time, I was a lot more free to do my own stuff—and the guys also encouraged me a lot to go crazier, because we wanted to do something more crazy.”

The result is 11 songs that do indeed hit harder—literally and metaphorically—than anything Pærish have made before. It’s louder, brasher, more direct. The shoegazey elements which have been such a defining sound of Pærish’s music are still there, but this is, as Court puts it, “more brutal and raw.” That’s clear from the moment the squalling feedback and crashing drums of opener “Prince Of Darkness”—more a reference to John Carpenter than Ozzy Osbourne—kick things off. It’s still dreamy and beautiful in a typically Pærish way, but it feels intentionally more immediate and visceral. 

It's not a one-off. The gloomy, glowering “Heal” and “Vapour Clouds” are both surging, scrappy explosions of bombastic feeling, while “Wait For Dark” builds to a deafening crescendo before “Crashing In Circles” swoops in to both temper and elevate its bristling atmosphere. But there are moments of quiet reflection too, contemplative journeys back to Court’s teenage years that bask in the glow of the past dreams with the full knowledge that they’ll be realized in the future, particularly “Always Assuming”—despite the crunching riffs that punctuate its shoegazing aesthetic—the gorgeous “Soothe”, which does just that, and “Hurry Slowly”, a vulnerable, open-hearted lament that feels perfectly formed for this day and age.

Speaking of perfectly formed, while Pærish said that they’d reached their final form with You’re In Both Dreams…, that doesn’t, apparently, mean they haven’t done the same with this one.
“If you’ve seen Dragon Ball Z,” says Wah, “then you know that Frieza [one of the anime show’s main antagonists, in case you didn’t know] always has a new, special final form.”
“We reached our final form,” clarifies Fouquet, “but we didn’t exploit its full potential.”
There are no concerns that Pærish haven’t done that this time. Rita, true to the inspiration of its title, is a magnitudinal force that combines both sides of their identity—the French nationality and the American influences—into a devastating, heart-crushing, transcendental whole that incorporates the band’s past self with who they are today.
“We're like a two-head monster,” says Court. “All the songs are born here, but we spend so much time creating and finishing them in the US that it's kind of a schizophrenic relationship. It's such American music, but they've been written in France about French memories as a kid—and that mix is always going to move me.”
“We’ve become part of a great US scene,” says Dupraz, “but now people back home think we don’t want to play France or spend time with our friends there. But of course we do. It’s a problem, but it’s a good problem to have.”