Basht. – Perfume
Dublin four-piece Basht. announce their debut album Poor Advice, due October 9th on LAB Records, and lead with “Perfume”, produced by Ali Chant (Dry Cleaning, Perfume Genius, PJ Harvey). It’s their first new material of 2026, following 2025’s Bitter and Twisted EP.
“Perfume” opens with restraint and builds slowly into something heavier. The arrangement gives each instrument room to operate independently: the rhythm section keeps a quiet, persistent drive underneath guitars that shift between unease and distortion. There’s no rush to the payoff. Jack Leavey describes the approach with producer Chant: “You’re figuring out the song as you go through, you don’t jump straight to the conclusion until the final chorus. He goes through everything quite surgically. It’s the first time we’ve worked like that. He pushes it further, we reign it back, then we find somewhere in the middle.”
Lyrically, the song deals with specific Irish history. Leavey writes from the perspective of a son watching his parents’ marriage unravel, framing it against the Catholic Church’s influence on private life in 20th century Ireland, where couples facing unplanned pregnancies were routinely pressured into marriage to avoid social shame. “This song reflects that reality”, he says, “capturing how personal lives were shaped by external pressures, where duty could outweigh desire and a single moment could determine the course of an entire future.”
That subject feeds into the larger concept of Poor Advice, a ten-track record that traces institutional power from the Church’s grip on Irish domestic life through to what Leavey calls its present-day equivalent: “moral authority outsourced to boardrooms and barracks, with the military industrial complex running like a grim metronome.” The title, he explains, is direct: “It’s all the counsel handed down from above: keep your head down, say your prayers, trust the deal.” Within the album’s narrative, “Perfume” anchors the opening, following a character who encounters different bad actors across his life. The four members, Leavey (vocals/guitar), Lughaidh Armstrong-Mayock (lead guitar), Ryan McClelland (drums), and Louis Christle (bass), settled into their current lineup as recently as last year, with Armstrong-Mayock and McClelland joining mid-tour before writing began in earnest.
I find the structural patience here genuinely interesting. Numerous bands describe this kind of slow-build approach but don’t actually pull it off. “Perfume” sounds like one that earns its second half.
