Danny Cohen
Shades Of Dorian Gray

Literature and cinema abound with ideas born from backward jumps and temporal confusions. Just remember, to stay with the "seventh art", the film by Francis F. Coppola "Peggy Sue Got Married" in which the protagonist (Katheen Turner) after fainting, returns to her high school years with all the inconveniences of the case: a teenager with a forty-year-old's head! One could cite, a fortiori, et en passant, "Back to the Future" by Robert Zemeckis…

All this serves to plow and prepare the ground for the album, published a few days ago, that I am going to present to you: "Shades Of Dorian Gray" by Danny Cohen... The progressive philosophy that sees music as having to move forward as the only direction of progress, in this case, is positively contradicted... This "Shades" sounds like an old vinyl and is unmissable; it brings us back in terms of sound, instruments, the way of composing, playing, and arrangements, to the atmospheres of the late '60s early '70s. Here too an incredible but not harmful space-time leap is fulfilled... quite the opposite!! Who knows why an artist like Cohen has remained so much in the shadows (imagine that he has released 3 CDs in recent years and before nothing or almost nothing). Only ostracism from record labels?? What a disgrace is this? Damn!, if it weren't for that other eccentric brain, that derailed mind Tom Waits to retrieve him, we would have missed, moldering in the shadows, this genius out of mind…

Danny gives us a work of musical vintage. And it's like discovering a "Santa Cristina" forgotten for years in a cellar... and never has aging been more beneficial... or like finding an old letter in an attic and, reading it, realizing that we have missed fantastic years. Just press play and start with the first track "Prayer In The Back & White" to understand what strange and forgotten musical island we have landed on… We are welcomed by a rickety brass band, from a small-town, out "like a terrace" type "Funeral Marching Band" accompanied by a little guitar with rusty strings… that need changing. But does Danny have the money for a new set? And suddenly the bewildered, weathered, nicotine-infused, ramshackle, and odd voice like that of a staggering drunk starts shouting desperate insults at Selene, kicking a can that rolls and clinks on the cobblestones… An artfully created vintage atmosphere that takes us back, like the aforementioned Peggy, to a time that was…

And in the second track "Avian Blues" what seemed to be an impression becomes a certainty… this artist has preserved within himself, like a shell with the sound of the sea, the sounds of a bygone era returning them to us intact, without contaminations or artifice of any kind, as if they were contemporaneous with that time… Try it to believe it! Every now and then I jump; ghosts appear to me… here is a blatant evocation and remembrance of that other madman of Syd Barrett… Well! How can one not feel emotion! And here sizzle the bloated Hammond and sax dangerous for my saudade… We move towards a "Vertigo" ballad heartbreaking enough to make me fear for its power of temporal dissociation… But is it true? The early rock healthy and innocent is resurrected! It's incredible! And in "Drawing In The Dark" Danny's voice, outside the lines including those of the staff, breaks, making me fear the worst… Ouch! isn't he going to collapse on the "Shure"?... But he recovers, and indeed he recovers... and his heartfelt interpretation gives us lunar glows… Strongly among these grooves, I sense the smell or odor, maybe it's better, of Watersian cracked walls brought up with the same mortar… In "Devil Brat" our man, without shame, indulges in post-binge vomiting spasms… In this climax how can one not think of scantily clad beauties and bearded flower children devoted to the cult of "MARIA" come back to us to give us chimerical promises of better worlds... or to tender metropolitan Indians roving the urban prairies full of positive ideals.

In "Death Waltz" we move towards the evocation of the mythical Procol… What bliss! And my heart breaks!! 16 tracks 16 without interruption and with no drop in tension... 16 tracks that give you back, like a pool of miraculous and healthier waters, a good number of years… But beware, we are at "RIGORMORTIS"... after the customary burp, that phlegmy stink bomb of Tom Waits is evoked in such true manner as to seem like a clone… But even beautiful things have an end: it heads towards an apotheosis with "Beneath The Shroud" that fades on a recall of a classic piece that does not come to me… I have it on the tip of my tongue… but it doesn't come to me... can anyone help me?? This seasoned Dutchman, with his dragging voice, has talent and deserves it, guys!!... An irregular who has kept the sounds of a time more mythical than ever... who reappears shortly before retirement, and who has much to say with his patched-up blues, his hints of tavern jazz, and with his crooked and lopsided voice will kidnap you, I’m sure of it...

Still haven't convinced you??? Then I aim at a more specific "target"... Have you ever owned a Eko acoustic with metal strings with which you tried, breaking your fingertips and fingers, to play a LaMiReMi riff… and her braids you couldn't understand what color they were anymore… and the dark cellar turned into a biological pit? Have you read and do you like BUKOWSKI and find yourself ordinarily a bit crazy too??? Do you drink, smoke, and have other unnamable vices? Have you ever used verbal slang: that is, insofar as... and have you ever climbed, for syntactic reasons, upstream? Have you loved "ON THE ROAD" by Kerouac? Does musical conformity annoy you and you believe that "sampling and the like" are poisonous to true music? Have you ever had sex with "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" on repeat? In confidence, and a little astray, if you have reached the "little death" by the ninth listen, you're regular... For those who have experienced this pleasant euthanasia at lower listens should worry... But those who came to the organ attack should consult a psychologist... Well! Prematurity in this sector is a disvalue... But back to us: are you anarchic, nonconformists; do you despise rules and live in a putrescent disorder? Then this album is for you! But don't worry yourself about it and don't feel devalued... As our friend FABER maintains: "FROM DUNG FLOWERS BORN"...

"SHADES OF DORIAN GRAY" as in the Wildean story, extends or gives you back your youth... it's like a torn canvas that celebrates a shattered perfection... And if after buying it, the listen should not satisfy you, I remind you of another dear friend's warning: "Poets what ugly creatures... every time they speak it's a swindle" Bye smiles of unknown distances!! So?? What are you still doing here?? What are you waiting for!! Are you going or not to "accattare" Danny Cohen?: hurry up!!!!

Don't let me down!! I beg you!!