Folk singer Linda Perhacs is suddenly one of the most-searched names in music - but for longtime fans, her story has always been one of the more unusual in American songwriting.
Born in 1943 in Santa Monica, California, Perhacs never set out to be a musician. She trained as a dental hygienist, and it was one of her patients - Oscar-winning film composer Leonard Rosenman - who heard a demo tape she'd made and brought her into a studio in 1969. The result, Parallelograms, released in 1970, blended folk guitar with hallucinatory, layered vocal arrangements inspired partly by Perhacs' synesthesia, a condition that let her experience sound as color and shape.
The album barely sold. Discouraged, Perhacs went back to cleaning teeth and largely left music behind for three decades.
Then, in 2000, a handwritten note arrived in her mailbox. A record collector had tracked her down, letting her know that Parallelograms had quietly become a cult favorite among crate-diggers and fans of experimental folk. The album was reissued multiple times through the 2000s, eventually influencing artists as varied as Daft Punk, Nas, Devendra Banhart, and Julia Holter.
In 2014 - 44 years after her debut - Perhacs released her long-awaited second album, The Soul of All Natural Things, produced with a new generation of collaborators including Julia Holter and Fernando Perdomo. A third album, I'm a Harmony, followed in 2017.
Perhacs' music has always carried a searching, spiritual quality, drawing many listeners into her songs as much for their sense of wonder as their melodies. That same devoted fanbase is now the driving force behind the current concern for her wellbeing, as friends and collaborators seek confirmation that the 82-year-old is safe.
Whatever the coming days reveal, Perhacs' influence on generations of musicians - and the singular, hard-to-categorize record that started it all - remains secure.
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