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Rating: How much time has passed since I first reviewed "5:55" on Debaser?
A year? Ten months? Five months and fifty-five days? Who knows. I don't go back to my reviews to check the correct date, to leave that aura of mystery that hangs over a distant and somewhat incoherent past. Why did I doubt you, Charlotte? Why?
I took your album from my collection, dusted it off, and smiled. I remembered how your record felt so "French", "Air", "electro-chic"... so little "Charlotte" that it left a bitter taste in my mouth. But I pretended otherwise, forgot my disappointment, and put "5:55" back in the player, flipping through the booklet, losing myself in the malicious lyrics that accompanied those sonic circles written in the air.
At six in the morning, "5:55" began, cradling me in a fascinating yet poetic half-sleep. A song imbued with an almost alien mood, a hypnotic rhythm that permeates the skin. We could call it electronic of the heart: simple, edgy, yet refined and emotional.
"Five fifty five.
Five fifty five.
No Sleep Tonight.
Five fifty five".
Psychedelic pop with Air-like swerves, French-touch shaken with a decidedly feminine charm. A charm that buzzes in the following, eerie, "AF607105": flickers of "Lemon Incest" on grooves of heavenly keyboards that swirl around a sweet yet obsessive and, in gentle tones, hysterical rhythm. Already by the second track, that album I had considered a half-disappointment appears to me as a great revelation. A revelation confirmed by the magnificent "The Operation", a sonic autopsy destined to mark the boundary between "love" and "science": quicker and more incisive than the two previous songs, more effective, supported by a bass as penetrating as a scalpel in the brain. Charlotte mews, whispers, enchants. She gets into your veins and sucks your blood.
And so it goes for this entire sonic trip. Until I wake up a little, full of euphoria, to the carefree and seductive pop of "The Songs That We Sing". I twirl barefoot in an ascetic room, floating between carillons and glockenspiels.
"I saw a photograph.
A woman in a bath of hundred dollar bills.
If the cold doesn't kill her, money will".
And then. First love: the extraordinary "Beauty Mark": an ode to a mole that becomes an anthem. Lost in my limbo of blankets, I start to whisper at the top of my lungs (and I emphasize the oxymoron) I'LL KEEP IT FOR YOUUUUUUUU, suddenly finding myself in the charming pop introspections of "Little Monsters" that elegantly enliven things. I slap myself, asking for forgiveness from that French muse who dazzled me with her bare body in the litany "Antichrist". A woman who manages to seduce with nothing, even though she is not beautiful, even though she is not part of those annoying tropes that are part of everyday life.
Then came the extraordinary "Everything I Cannot See", acoustic rock at times angry, at times dreamy, sustained by a piano that, once again, illuminates everything with a kiss that tastes jazzy. To close the circle, like a seal, the elegiac "Morning Song", intangible and devoid of rhythm, yet beautiful. Fucking beautiful.
Yes, now I am happy.
I have managed to find the right path again. I'll probably lose it again, redefining this great album as a disappointment.
But you know: I smoke daisies in fields of sunflowers, and anything can be possible with me.
What is certain is that "5:55" has become one of the albums I listen to the most these days.
Happy New Year :)
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 AF607105 (04:30)
Melancholy
aviation
chocolate
perfume
cigarettes
frequent flyer
stow away
dislocation
sleeping
jets
wave goodbye
feel homesick
tranquilizers
bill of fare
cry easy
dvt
disapear into thin air
chorus
we wish you all a very happy pleasant flight
this is a journey to the center of the night
and the inflight entertainment's out of sight
here on af 607105
time difference
you're waking
chase the sun into your eyes
sleeping cities
dust hotel rooms
passengers look to the skies
fly over
your lifetime
and never touching down
my heart
is breaking
somewhere over saskatchewan
chorus
we wish you all a very happy pleasant flight
this is a journey to the center of the night
and the inflight entertainment's out of sight
here on af 607105
your life in
the wrong hands
savannah and frozen wastes
the flight path
the wingspan
below the earth rotates
i love you
i miss you
i cannot see your face
invent a
new persona
drunk here on the edge of space
all the things i carry with me
and all the things i left behind
and all the things that wait to meet me
hover in the air tonight
if i can only keep on moving
and never stop and think of me
and freefall through the years and decades
terminal velocity
chorus
we hope you had a very happy pleasant flight
this is our final destination so goodnight
like a stone we are now falling from the sky
farewell from af 607105
the cabin
is burning
i smile and feel complete
here amongst
total strangers
27 000 feet
suspended
isolation
kids throw toy planes in the street
one final
blaze of glory
viewed from a window seat
03 The Operation (03:59)
I want to explore you
i'm gonna get under your skin
so you can feel me running through your veins
i want to examine
every inch of your frame
the pressure points that cause your joy and pain
our love goes under the knife
there is no room for doubt
now i'm inside you
my hands can feel their way
further inside than i have ever been
now i can really
mess around with your heart
and fill it to the brim with broken dreams
our love goes under the knife
two lives may be saved
and if i pull this off
i'll refuse the nobel prize
instead i will look into your eyes
if i pull this off your whole body will be mine
and i'm prepared to work throughout the night
our love goes under the knife
nothing is taboo
...here on the cutting edge of science
too much information
i feel i'm getting lost
absorbed into the fibre of your soul
deep within the abbatoir
of your entrails your insides
lost in you forever far from home
our love goes under the knife
someone got too close
our love goes under the knife
the heart was rejected by the host
06 Beauty Mark (03:06)
I've got a beauty mark
written on my skin
close to my heart
my favourite part
my beauty mark
I keep it out of sight
safe from the world outside
this old battle scar
this secret part
my beauty mark
this little death
this mark of sin
forever printed on my skin
I'll keep it for you
this hidden place
this private part
this secret door into my heart
I'll keep it for you
this precious jewel
this darling bud
this tiny reservoir of blood
my beauty mark
I'll keep it for you
10 Everything I Cannot See (05:45)
I feel you all around me
you are everything i cannot see
as the ocean crawls onto the shoreline
so you lap at the edges of me
and now, as i'm walking
i know that you're watching me move
for as much as i need you
i must walk away from you
you're my life, you're my hope
you're the chain, you're the rope
you're my god, you're my hell
you're the sky, you're myself
you're the reason i'm living
you're all that i have to discover
you're the rain, you're the stars
you're so near, you're so far
you're my friend, you're my foe
you're the miles left to go
you are everything i ever wanted
and you are my lover
so i carry i carry the flowers
the flowers that are dead in my hands
they will rise up at the very sight of you
they will naturally understand
that today is the day
that we find out once and for all
now you know i must leave here
you must let me stand or fall
you're my life, you're my hope
you're the chain, you're the rope
you're my god, you're my hell
you're the sky, you're myself
you're the reason i'm living
you're all that i have to discover
you're the rain, you're the stars
you're so near, you're so far
you're my friend, you're my foe
you're the miles left to go
you are everything i ever wanted
and you are my lover
if i leave will you follow can i put my faith in you
you're my life, you're my hope
you're the chain, you're the rope
you're my god, you're my hell
you're the sky, you're myself
you're the reason i'm living
you're all that i have to discover
you're the rain, you're the stars
you're so near, you're so far
you're my friend, you're my foe
you're the miles left to go
you are everything i ever wanted
and you are my lover
and i love you now
as i loved you then
but this island life
just had to end
but you will allways be
my special friend
i will carry you with me
and we can love again
now the drizzle
soaks us to the skin
and the stars hang like a noose
so let's face this together
now this storm is finally though
you're my life, you're my hope
you're the chain, you're the rope
you're my god, you're my hell
you're the sky, you're myself
you're the reason i'm living
you're all that i have to discover
you're the rain, you're the stars
you're so near, you're so far
you're my friend, you're my foe
you're the miles left to go
you are everything i ever wanted
and you are my lover
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Other reviews
By Kid_A
The prevailing sensation is of a work devoted in every particular detail to the cult of hi-fi, a kind of extra-luxury packaging.
An album that will add a snobby touch to your collection, but that you'll struggle to take out of its case more than a couple of times.
By Torre Ste
The main idea was to write in music the thoughts of a person suffering from insomnia at 5:55 in the morning, thus describing daydreams and visions of ghosts.
She provided the ideas for the drafting of the album, but above all, she contributed her whispered voice, performing the forty-two minutes of music without a flaw.
By O__O
"The poetic lyrics almost bring tears... but the melodies are so repetitive and anonymous they almost bring a smile."
"Caressing, passionate, heart-wrenching but also repetitive and anonymous: what’s left is the cover to put on display on my bedroom’s record shelf."
