Mathias Court, frontman and guitarist of Paris-based PÆRISH, credits Offspring, by way of his older sister, for changing his life. “My older sister was a teenager when I was 8 or 9 years old, and I discovered music through her,” he says. “She was playing some Offspring songs in her room. … The Smash album truly changed my life.”

Court, who met his bandmates Martin Dupraz (bass) and Julien Louvion (drums) in film school in 2010, recorded a three-song demo before being joined by Frederic Wah (guitar).

When the original trio met, Court and Dupraz were studying film production and Louvion sound engineering. And while Paris isn’t exactly a hub for pop-punk music (EDM and hip-hop are trendier in Paris, says Dupraz), PÆRISH used Spotify and Bandcamp to get their songs out to the world. Their sound, which Dupraz describes as “melodic songs with powerful and noisy riffs,” are well-illustrated in their upcoming debut, Semi Finalists. Recorded in Glasgow but heavily influenced by American bands such as Blink-182 and Brand New, the band talks about what it’s like to play French rock & roll with such Yankee style.

Hometown:

Dupraz: I come from a small town near Lyon, Mathias comes from north of France, Julien comes from south of France and Fred grew up in Paris.

Homebase: We all live in Paris.

I love that story that Mathias’ life was changed by his sister’s musical taste. What about the rest of the band? How did you all discover music?

Dupraz: We all grew up in musical households. My father is a drummer like Julien’s father, he made me listen to The Beatles, Queen, and other great bands. My brother was 18 in 1990 so he was listening to all the bands I love now like Green Day, The Smashing Pumpkins or Nirvana, and Mathias’ mom is a huge David Bowie fan, so music has always been a huge deal for us.

Who are your biggest musical influences as PÆRISH?

Dupraz: American bands we grew up with like Blink 182, Brand New, Weezer, The Smashing Pumpkins, and also scottish bands like Biffy Clyro, Frightened Rabbit and many others. I’m a huge hardcore punk fan, Julien used to listen to a lot of metal bands, Mathias and Fred loves noisy bands so all our influences end up mixed in our own music.

I read that you guys are big Robin Williams fans, and the name PÆRISH is based on the awkward, skinny kid character Alan Parrish from his movie Jumanji. Why did you choose that name for the band?

Dupraz: We love that idea of a young boy trapped in a adult body. We’re all grown ups but we don’t want to lose our innocence and be too serious, we want to stay what we are.

Does living in Paris influence your music?

Dupraz: A beautiful city like Paris is really inspiring, even if we don’t really listen to French bands or French artists, we can’t deny that there’s a really poetic vibe here.

Court: Paris is clearly the best city in France to see bands play live and discover new genres of music. We wouldn’t have discovered all those amazing bands if we haven’t left our small cities, and that really influenced us throughout the years.

Who would you love to collaborate with?

Dupraz: Mathias and I are huge fans of Failure so we’d love to work with Ken Andrews, and all these amazing producers who made the records we listened to growing up as musicians.

Tell us some of your favorite concert stories as a band.

Dupraz: A few weeks ago we played a show in a town called Lorient, we played our set like we always do and everything was cool. But after the headliner band played his set, a bunch of people who weren’t there when we played asked us to play [again], so we did two shows in the same night and people were really excited!

Court: Two years ago during a Parisian gig, we met a Russian fan who was on holiday in Paris. He came to the show with his wife and he sang the songs from our very first 2010 demo, it felt both strange and incredible for us.

Why is your  single called “Undone”?

Court: Some of our songs name can sometimes be way longer (like “I’ve Got Punched In The Face, What’s Your Excuse?”), but as “Undone” was our simplest song ever composed, it felt natural to give it the most simple name. I wasn’t working on a special theme, I really wanted to talk about something else than myself. But when I read the lyrics now, I can really tell that it was uncounsciously written in the anticipation of a break up.

If you were a hashtag, what would you be?

Dupraz: #FreePizzaForAll

Court: #PuppiesForAll

Wah: #SHREDERIC

Do you remember the first song you ever wrote?

Court: My first song was written under our previous band name, Crackity Flynn, and it was called "Cannon." I was about 19 when I wrote it, and it talks about spending holidays in south of France when you’re a kid. Some of our oldest fans still ask for it when we play shows!

What's a piece of gear you can't live without?

Court: I really like weird tunings so I always have a capo in my pocket, and I especially love weird capos that can work on just two or three strings of your guitar.

Dupraz: I always have a camera on me, my old film camera, my phone or anything, but I really like to take pictures wherever I go to try to catch the vibe of the place and of the moment we’re living there.

Every musician has an awesome Myspace-related story. Can you tell us about yours?

Dupraz: My sister was a huge Myspace user when I was younger, so thanks to her and thanks to Myspace, I discovered a lot a cool indie bands. Some of them became really huge, like the Arctic Monkeys! At this time, I was listening to a lot of hardcore bands, punk bands, and all this indie rock movement was pretty new for me, it was really really cool.