Photo Credit credit Sammy Tunis

Permanent Moves is Shane Chapman and Julia Sirna-Frest, an indie-electro-folk-rock duo from Brooklyn, NY. They started writing music together in 2016 based on found texts and have grown into an unique blend of eclectic orchestrations and soaring, emotional harmonies that The New York Times has called “sonically gorgeous.” Their forthcoming concept album Don’t Forget Us: A Chekhovian Song Cycle – out on April 12 – uses the work of Anton Chekhov as inspiration and their north star. The project features Chris Giarmo (American Utopia), Jessie Shelton (Hadestown), Karl Blau, Starr Busby and many other special guests. It also features translations by Laurence Senelick.

Permanent Moves will celebrate the release of Don’t Forget Us: A Chekhovian Song Cycle with a live performance on April 16 at Brooklyn’s Sultan Room. Tickets are available now.

What can we expect from this debut?

We hope you will feel seen by these songs. We are a century removed from Chekhov’s plays but stuck on the same questions: Is it too late to change my life? Am I living authentically and thoughtfully? We have spent the last seven years mulling over these questions and adding good old fashioned Rock and Roll in an attempt to answer them so I guess what we’re saying is it will literally change your life.

How did you get the idea for the record? Any specific message you wanted to portray?

After our first collaboration, which re-imagined the first act of Eugene O’Neil’s “The Iceman Cometh” as a concept album for the stage, we wanted to explore more ways to take classic text and adapt it as song cycles. Chekhov was the first and only pitch for the next attempt to blur the lines of theater and music. We wanted to capture the emotional landscape of the plays without being bound to any linear or narrative restrictions. Chekhov is so consistent with his themes that we found we could mix lines from different scenes, characters and even plays and still tell one story.

What was the creative process like? You have had many many members in your group. How did you harmonize everyone’s take?

We have a non-traditional structure. There are performers on the album who have been at almost every performance along the way and there are performers like the bass clarinet player whom we have not met to this day. He did his takes, which were brilliant, at home. Our featured vocalist, who we have met and performed with, mostly did the same. This accounted for about a year of overdubs and editing but the real fun was in the performances, rehearsals and initial tracking at Mission Sound in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Its full orchestration calls for a 15-person band of horns, strings and rhythm all anchored by the classic Wurlitzer sound. We are so lucky to be in NYC where the most talented musicians in the world have taken the time and care to perform with us. This album started as a live show (with vodka shots being given to the audience) to an experience that can be live, on headphones while on the train, to playing the vinyl at home (and providing your own vodka shots)!

What’s the most representative track in it and why?

“Don’t Forget Us” is the title track and it’s emblematic of both the mood and lyrical themes of the album. Irena, of Three Sisters, looks to the idyllic someday of Moscow and vows to find a better life. This song is for anyone who’s ever feared that someday would arrive too soon only to find that you are the same person you’ve always been. Thank you to Laurence Senelick for lines like “the wind is cruel uncertainty”, his translations in general and the permission to use them in our concept album.

Questioning life choices is a big theme here. Did making this record help you with that?

We both laughed out loud reading this question together, I think because neither of us have ever spent so much money or time on a single project. It’s very common in theater to spend seven years on a play but in the music world it’s considered to be a bit much unless you’re Daft Punk. Are we crazy? Don’t answer that. Life is very short and uncertain to not do what you love to do and absolutely, this album has been an affirmation of that.

What can we expect from your 2024?

There’s nothing worse than dropping an album and not having a follow up. With that in mind, we have written most of the material for our next album which we will be recording on the West coast this summer! We Both Die First will be a collection of singer-songwriter / country inspired songs featuring original lyrics and, we are thinking, some pedal steel guitar.

FOLLOW PERMANENT MOVES Official Site / YouTube / Instagram