K's Choice
Paradise in Me

Remembering the discovery of this album is akin to listening to its middle track, "Wait". Certainly not the best. Its acoustic simplicity and its sweet adolescent storyline on the edge of "stalking" perfectly represent the starting point of someone, at a young age, who has just stumbled upon a treasure to keep for oneself and to pursue over time to understand its depths.

As its lyrics go: "it's one of those things I won't tell anyone, I'll carve it on the trunk of a tree".

Then, when the small anthem of the title track starts, the sense of punk innocence is palpable to the nerve. Here, as in every other track, Sarah’s perpetually broken voice, never truly young, provides the charming contrast that will make us either love or hate them.

She, at the microphone together with her brother Gert, will be remembered for the radio success of "Not An Addict". A piece of alternative rock about addiction to drugs or love (take your pick), following the path of the more famous "Zombie" by the Cranberries, which combines the Seattle verb with the typically Anglo-Saxon taste.

Digging deeper, hints of early Pearl Jam emerge in the final tail of "A Sound That Only You Can Hear" (the younger sister of "Not An Addict").

While a handful of acoustic tracks represent the delicate side of the band with mixed results. Thumbs down for "Dad", sufficiently heartfelt but bordering on the cloying.

Much better are "Song For Catherine" and "Only Dreaming", where the electricity is thrown to the ground, discharged, with the strings this time dictating the emotions.

Then there's the rest.

Four tracks that consign K's Choice to the eternity of a front row on the shelf of musical loves.

The dark, impenetrable words of "White Kite Fauna" are the perfect synthesis of a fascinating dream. A sparse framework of drums and bass on which to hang a child's visions. The result is the creation of a sweet melancholy, vague yet familiar, that belongs to you while simultaneously slipping through your fingers.

An effect that continues in "Mr Freeze", with the electricity of the guitars swaying in the sea of Dover. It's time to dance to the memories of distant emotions. Once again, it's a sense of sweet bewilderment that takes hold of you. Letting go means settling on it, trusting and allowing yourself to be carried away.

The final blow comes with "To This Day" and "Iron Flower".

The first tears at the soul, grabs attention with a sound vortex closely related to the Radiohead of "The Bends". It confronts you with essential questions, leaves you without answers, and then disappears.

The second is the totalization of their potential as a group.

Brother and sister liquefied into a single semi-organic compound made of iron and weak flesh. A post-modern giant that staggers and advances to the rhythm of compressed guitars, leaving behind an alien effluvium.