Enter the world of Plum. A kaleidoscopic, idiosyncratic post-punk band from our great city of Chicago, who employ just as much agile, angular gymnastics as they do delicious, melodic rock and roll. Guitarist/vocalist Jeff Kelley, bassist/vocalist Heather Perry and drummer Karissa Talanian work together like a singular machine, pushing and pulling their music into delightfully peculiar directions that perk up the ears and the brain and the heart. 

Plum has just released their first-ever album Can’t Hold On To It, and with it a Free Monday release show on September 9th, 2024 with Mrkt and BLOODHYPE. Aside from creating this catchy, crisp collection of songs, it should be noted that Plum is an exceptional live band, displaying very little difference from their recordings to a live setting. It’s very charged, energized and exciting to watch and experience. We sat down with the band at the bar for a quick chat about touring Japan, what exactly night fruit is and their favorite Bottle memories. Long live Plum.

Conversation recorded & transcribed at the Empty Bottle bar on September 5th, 2024.

Chris Sutter: Your band is called Plum which we’re told is a fruit. What is your favorite fruit? 

JEFF KELLEY: Pineapple

HEATHER PERRY: Blueberries 

KARISSA TALANIAN: Cherries 

CHRIS: Interesting…

KARISSA: Can I take this opportunity to talk about my favorite genre of fruit?

CHRIS: Absolutely. 

KARISSA: Night fruit. Fruit that you eat at night. 

CHRIS: Can you elaborate on that?

KARISSA: Anything you want. Berries, pineapple’s a good one. Sliced apples, pears. Anything like that. 

JEFF: What’s a day fruit? 

KARISSA: Bananas, apples. Watermelon… anyway, that’s all. 

CHRIS: Should we talk about tomatoes as fruits or should we not get into it? 

KARISSA: [laughs] how dare you? 

CHRIS: On a more serious note, how is Chicago for a band like Plum? 

JEFF: I think it’s excellent. I think there’s a lot of community here that’s really supportive. We’re not a newer band anymore but we’re transitioning out of that with our first album. I think there’s a lot of locations for a band to play to an audience even if they’re not super well known. Like [Cafe] Mustache, I think Bottle Free Mondays are really good for that. 

KARISSA: Jeff owns a house, we can practice there and the Empty Bottle is here so that’s it for me [band laughs]. 

HEATHER: That’s all you need. 

JEFF: Good audiences, [as far as] band members: we all found each other through playing in the scene together for however many years. 

CHRIS: Last winter Plum toured Japan, how the heck was that? 

KARISSA: Sick. 

HEATHER: Amazing. The best thing I’ve ever done. 

CHRIS: Karissa you kind of helped set that up? 

KARISSA: Yeah, I have history. I have a whole other life out there. We got to play with a bunch of friends, we made a bunch of new friends. 

CHRIS: How is touring in Japan different from touring in the United States?

JEFF: We got to do it all by train which was super sick because all of the venues have backline. So it’s not like being on the road and eating shitty fast food. It’s being on trains, and we stayed with a lot of the bands we played with so people made us home cooked meals a lot which was fucking awesome.

HEATHER: Also, the most supportive, gracious, respectful audience members and other bands I’ve ever encountered. We played very, very small places where most people were seated and just gazing respectfully at us as we played, so engaged with the music. Some of the other bands knew our names before we got there, they had really listened to us and learned who we were and welcomed us with gifts. We got gifts from multiple bands when we arrived at venues. It was really lovely. 

CHRIS: What are your favorite Empty Bottle shows? 

HEATHER: That’s so hard. 

JEFF: The first one that comes to mind is the one where Built To Spill opened for Meat Wave? Or no, Meat Wave opened for Built To Spill who played before Parquet Courts. Fucking killer lineup.

HEATHER: There’s so many. I think I was here for both of the back-to-back Dry Cleaning nights when they were touring. God, they were so incredible and it was so great to be in this room for that.

KARISSA: Jack White, December 2022. That was great. Any time Kikagaku Moyo played here. Any time Acid Mother’s Temple plays here. Fuck, there’s so many. 

JEFF: I feel like this is my default concert venue so I’m like, what’s my favorite show I’ve ever been to? 

KARISSA: I feel like I’ve been to several hundred shows here. 

CHRIS: Final question, you guys just put out your first album ‘Can’t Hold Onto It.’ Describe the record in three words. Or more, there’s not really any rules. 

[the band ponders…] 

JEFF: New no-wave. 

HEATHER: I’m going way more metaphorically here… I’m going to go with color-saturated, and angular. 

KARISSA: I’m so bad at this… I’d say labor of love. 

CHRIS: Aw, that’s great. Beautiful. Is there anything else you’d like to impart to Empty Bottle nation?

KARISSA: Get here when the first band starts and stay for the whole thing. 

JEFF: Yeah! For sure. The openers are great. 

KARISSA: Mrkt are one of my favorite bands I’ve played with. They’re from Detroit and I don’t think they’ve ever played outside of Detroit but we played with them last year and they blew my mind. As more bands told us they weren’t available for this date, I thought I should try to get a band here that no one here has heard of that’s going to blow everyone’s minds. And Bloodhype rocks, we love them. 

CHRIS: Hell yeah. Thanks y’all.