Music Reviews: Artist Archives
Piano Magic
Low Birth Weight
The sleeve art of Low Birth Weight seems relatively humorous and innocent, even a bit cute—kittens sitting down to have tea and snacks, rabbits teaching school, a pair of squirrels enjoying some wine and a cigar. Then you realize that these furry creatures are actually stuffed and mounted. Suddenly, those innocent images that looked like they belonged in a Hans Christian Anderson tale now look like they came from a nature film by David Lynch.
As such, the cover art is quite appropriate for the music. Sounding like pastoral English folk songs run through the requisite shoegazer and 4AD filters, Piano Magic’s music is as spectral and eerie as it is beautiful and enchanting, like walking through a toystore in Twin Peaks, or spending the night in a haunted Victorian manor.
I first heard Piano Magic on their release for Darla’s Bliss-Out Series. It was a gently soothing album of gentle ambience and Victorian harpsichords, but the songs sounded like they came from the stateroom of a luxury liner lost in the Bermuda Triangle. On “Low Birth Weight”, the nautical themes are gone, but those disturbingly comforting sounds and vocals remain.
During “Snowfall Soon”, Caroline Potter’s barely-there vocals echo out half-realized lyrical fragments like “goodbye is nothing new/but it’s last breath when said by you/and this world shrinks to a room/weather inside, snowfall soon” that peek out from behind an MBV-esque curtain of noise and tribal percussion. “Dark Secrets Look For Light” tells of a man who ridicules his wife for being ugly; when he finds that she’s hung herself, he blinds himself with a white-hot poker. And even a love song, like “Snow Dreams”, has a wintry edge to it, with lyrics like “The sky is a grey flint/From coast to coast/With birds frozen in” set against lethargic guitars, a ghostly theremin, and gentle vibes.
The vocals work especially well on this album. Sounding like they were recorded on a 19th century victrola, they have a ghostly, wispy sound to them, even on the handful of songs featuring spoken word, which I’m normally not a fan of, but it works quite nicely here. It’s like you’re being read a bedtime story penned by Mervyn Peake by the ghost of your great grandmother.
The reason that Piano Magic’s “formula” is so successful (and enjoyable) is that they don’t try to force their seductive oddness on you. They don’t try to involve you in the wierd stories and pastoral vistas. The music is too passive for that. Instead, they let you come in on your own volition, because they know that once you willingly listen, it’ll be that much harder for you to leave.
Bliss Out, Volume 13
Billed as the most “relaxing” entry in Darla’s long running ambient “Bliss Out” series, Piano Magic puts out an incredibly soft, underspoken album with a nautical theme. Most theme albums strike me as either pretentious or unrewarding. Either they go too far with the theme, or they don’t go far enough. In this case, Piano Magic (love the name) creates two engrossing tales the follow a nautical theme. But we’re not talking about Gilligan’s Island. No, the waters are decidedly less-friendly. It describes frozen waters, underneath a sky “so cold you can hear the moon,” littered by rusting ships and the memories of shipwrecked sailors.
The album begins with “A Trick Of The Sea,” which starts off with a gentle guitar melody that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Slowdive record. This slowly gives way to a swirling, disorienting all-electronic section that, although initially out of place, grows on the listener. This gives way to another guitar piece, this time with vocals. The vocalist, Lucy Gulland, has a remarkable voice and the lyrics match perfectly with the mood of the album, with lines such as “Heading South so I can go North/guided by birds but drifting off course/read the tide-table before going out/but 50 years old with chapters torn out). Over 20 minutes in length, “A Trick Of The Sea” finally fades away to the pulses of what sounds like a GPS satellite and more electronic waves and rhythms.
The second track, “Halloween Boat,” differs from the first in that it is all-electronic and is spoken word. I’ll admit that I didn’t like this track at all when I first heard it. I felt the spoken word bit was too distracting from the gentle lull of the music. But I was wrong. This is another soothing piece, as Charles Wyatt speaks of a sailor trapped on the frozen sea with a “let’s maker it better” letter from his love. In some ways, more soothing than the first due to the gentle electronic pulses and the gentle sounds of the sea, “Halloween Boat” continues the ghostly themes of the first track.
Piano Magic has crafted an incredibly nice album, and this makes me want to hear more of their catalog. Although some parts may strike the listener as odd and out of place, they eventually add to the variety and flow of the record. Ghostly, haunting, melancholy, eerie, relaxing—all of these terms reply. Piano Magic creates two hauntingly beautiful tales that sound like recordings straight from the Sargasso Sea or the stateroom of the “Flying Dutchman.”
Speed The Road, Rush The Lights
I’m going to come right out and say it—I thought Writers Without Homes was a pretty decent album. However, most people seem to think that it represents the nadir of Piano Magic’s catalog. Sure, it might not compare to Low Birth Weight or Artists’ Rifles, but it wasn’t that bad, was it? Those same people also seem to be falling all over themselves in praise of Piano Magic’s latest full-length, The Troubled Sleep Of Piano Magic. But I guess I’m at odds with popular opinion again, as I don’t find that album nearly as brilliant as others do.
This 3-song EP is a nice and succinct summation of what’s wrong with the latest full-length. The title track is a bleary-eyed recounting of late-night pining and desperation—only lacking in the desperation. The music meanders from loping basslines to sudden outbursts of crashing drums and guitars, from stark guitar notes that sound as if they’ve been bleached by neon lights to eerie Disintegration-esque synths. While each of these elements sound fine on their own, the song never successfully connects them in any meaningful way until the song’s final outburst.
It ends up sounding rather arbitrary, with little rhyme or reason, lending little if any emotional heft to the lyrics. And regarding the lyrics, the song contains some of the same brilliant wordplay as past Glen Johnson writings. But constant repetition robs them of any cleverness and effect they might’ve had otherwise.
After the short guitar-and-strings interlude of “Paulette”, the disc winds down with the slow-burning “Luxembourg Gardens”. The fragile vocals of Klima’s Angele David-Guillou are a lovely element—the nicest on the EP—and lend an innocence, a small sliver of light to the darker soundscapes, which are populated by ominous keys and sparse guitars. However, as it continues, it becomes increasingly obvious where the song is heading.
Sure enough, the synths begin to darken and swell right before the song explodes in a Mogwai-ish climax of surging guitars. Furthermore, since it’s smack dab in the middle of the song, it’s only purpose seems to be waking up any listeners who might’ve nodded off, ensuring that they’re awake for another 3 minutes or so plodding gloominess.
Given how artistic, mercurial, and vital Piano Magic’s sound has been in the past, I find it rather troublesome and disappointing that their songs have become as predictable as this.
Writers Without Homes
Those who have been lamenting the passage of 4AD’s melancholy house band This Mortal Coil can all breathe a sigh of relief with the release of Writers Without Homes. Released domestically towards the end of 2002, the album finds Piano Magic picking up the former band’s mantle, both in execution and spirit.
Like This Mortal Coil, Piano Magic is a collective with a revolving door membership whose axis is one Glen Johnson. And like This Mortal Coil, Piano Magic is adept at creating lushly orchestrated pieces that swing between dreamy pop and bizarre mood pieces with ease, all the while dripping with loss, melancholy, and beauty.
The album opens with the slight sounds of “Music Won’t Save You From Anything But) Silence” (like their contemporaries in Hood, Piano Magic is, if nothing else, adept at crafting clever song titles). Johnson whispers “Music won’t save you from anything but silence/Not from heartache, not from violence”. And then, as if to illustrate, the drums begin to build and the guitars begin to crescendo, seeking to give Mogwai a run for their money.
However, I find the lyrics more than just a bit ironic, because throughout their existence, themes of heartache and violence, of regret and alienation have dominated their oeuvre. There’s the Flying Dutchman scenario of their Bliss Out album, the lover of “Dark Secrets Look For Light” (who blinds himself after being unable to see his ugly wife’s inner beauty), and the themes of war that punctuate Artist’s Rifles. Indeed, Piano Magic’s entire catalog seems devoted to the idea that music can help one deal with and possibly even bring beauty out of such subject matter.
Son De Mar
Composed as a soundtrack to Bigas Luna’s movie of the same name, “Son De Mar” (which means “sound of the sea”) isn’t the first time Piano Magic has written music with a nautical theme. Their first attempt was their excellent “Trick Of The Sea”. Like that album, “Son De Mar” looks at the darkness just below the surface, crafting haunting soundscapes that conjure up misty beaches, abandoned lighthouses, and hulking shipwrecks waiting to be discovered.
Opening with the tolling of the bells, “Track 1” (there are no proper track titles) sets the somber mood. Eventually, the sounds of waves and eerie melodies become the dominant sounds, but still maintain the haunting atmosphere. You imagine yourself walking alongside the beach on a grey morning, the dock just barely visible in the fog, and beyond that, the ghostly shapes of ships slowly moving out to deeper waters.
The second track takes on a slightly brighter air, over plucked strings and sparse orchestration. But it still conveys the same feelings of sadness and trepidation. These feelings soon become the album’s dominant themes. There’s an unspeakable melancholy that pervades this album, even when it veers off into more experimental territories a la Lucid or After The Flood. At times, especially during the more string-oriented pieces, I’m reminded of another moving soundtrack, this one for “Children Of Nature”.
Despite there being no lyrics, no track titles, and only the briefest of liner notes, this album teems with images. Not necessarily upbeat, summery images, but evocative ones nevertheless. Like all good scores, it’s perfectly enjoyable apart from its companion movie. Indeed, I’m tempted to say that the scenes that this soundtrack conjures up in my imagination are just as fully realized as those in Luna’s film.
It’s easy to see those seaside villages battered by the waves over the years, to imagine the cold wind and spray on my face, to taste the salty air. And somewhere, just beyond the horizon… I hear it.
I hear the sea. I hear my name.