Before listening to a single note of Suris’ new album, “Pertinax”, I spent a few minutes just looking at the word. Pertinax. It has the distinct ring of a Stoic philosopher’s last defiant utterance or maybe a type of beetle known for its unusually stubborn shell. What a curious flag to fly for a collection of songs in an age of fleeting distraction. But as the atmospheric and soulful world created by Lindsey and David Mackie unfolds, the name’s purpose crystallizes. This is a profound study in persistence—not the loud, chest-thumping kind found in myths, but the quiet, tenacious strength of something that has been broken and has chosen, deliberately, to become whole again.
The album opens with the aftershocks. On “after the quake,” we are immediately placed in the debris field of some great upheaval, tasked with “sifting the earth” for what remains. The song and, by extension, the entire album, puts forth a radical idea, one that has made me stop and reconsider the very teacups on my shelf. It refutes the pursuit of a flawless past, declaring, “nothing more beautiful than a mended thing.” This line clicks something into place. It reminds one of the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired with lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. The break is not hidden; it is illuminated, celebrated as a part of the object’s history. This is the philosophy of “Pertinax.”
Lindsey Mackie’s voice serves as the golden lacquer throughout. It’s a voice that feels less like it’s singing *at* you and more like it’s narrating a half-remembered fable from inside your own head. It tells its unsettling stories with a smooth, soulful surface, while underneath, Dave Mackie’s production builds entire worlds—part art rock dreamscape, part alt-folk confessional. There are moments when a guitar chord in “Wayman” hangs in the air with the specific weight of a Tuesday afternoon in 1983, when the sunlight through the blinds was thick with dust and possibilities felt both infinite and entirely out of reach.
The mending process is not linear. It involves frantic escapes, like the sigh of relief that is “Last Train Home,” a journey away from a “heavy crime” and into the cleansing air of freedom. It involves righteous, system-shattering anger. “Eruption” is a startling jolt, a furious condemnation of an “old man” and the corrupt structures he represents, calling for revolution led by a “woman’s touch.” It argues, compellingly, that some fractures are so deep they cannot be mended personally without also demanding a radical change in the world that caused them. Then there are the necessary acts of personal liberation, of shattering the bell jar that “Huma” describes, of refusing to remain a “Still Life” for the comfort of others.
Yet, “Pertinax” understands that strength is not always about defiance. Deeper into the album, a different kind of resilience emerges. In “Armour of Love,” strength is found not in fighting, but in feeling held by a spiritual force. “Take All She Brings” proposes an even more challenging fortitude: the courage to embrace uncertainty and doubt, to stand in the bewildering mess of life and “still believe that you have wings.” This isn’t the armor of battle; it’s the armor of acceptance, forged not from steel, but from grace.
The album never pretends the scars disappear. “Born To Be With You” is a raw, tender ache, a testament to the fact that some pieces, no matter how carefully mended, will always signal where the break was. It is the painful acceptance that a love that felt destined must be let go.
By the time the final track, “Fugue,” arrives, we are left with a feeling of exhausted, ethereal peace. It’s a desire for dissolution, a plea to be released “into stars” and to escape the nightly trap of the mind. This isn’t defeat. It’s surrender. It’s the ultimate act of stoicism, recognizing that after withstanding, rebuilding, and fighting, the final healing comes from letting go of control. “Pertinax” doesn’t just chronicle a journey toward wholeness; it redefines it.
After all is said and done, what if the most resilient thing we can be is not an unbreakable fortress, but a beautifully broken vessel, made more precious by the light that now shines through its cracks?
