Marc Almond with Michael Cashmore
Feasting With Panthers

THE REVIEW

This delightful dish, I would say, is this. The recipe includes a single album and three ingredients that are anything but indifferent to my palate: a unique and very expressive timbre, that of Marc Almond, an alien presence and in its way destabilizing, namely that of Michael Cashmore of Current 93 and a literary archive of great charm.

Marc Almond and Cashmore decided to work as early as 2008, starting with the writings of the German count Eric Stenbock, releasing the short EP The lunatic lover/Gabriel. In 2011, the long-distance collaboration is solidified with the release of this long project that translates into music the spirit of the most significant poetry of the late 20th century. In addition to Stenbock, "Feasting with Panthers" contains the lyrics, adapted for singing, of Verlaine, Genet, Cocteau, Rimbaud, and others.

As you might have guessed, these are rather cumbersome contents that suggest a risk of "heaviness" that is fortunately avoided thanks to the great professionalism of the two artists. Marc Almond imparts the right dramatic charge to the cursed stories of the protagonists while Cashmore carefully crafts a rich yet gentle, non-intrusive, and classy tapestry. A work of balance that sees the long and complex suites of "Boy Caesar" and the concluding "Feasting with Panthers" share spaces with the more intimate and sparse "Patron Saint of Lipstick" and "The sleeper in the valley."

We are ultimately on the same grounds as Antony & The Johnsons, with whom Cashmore worked in "the snow abides," but with measured turns towards a chic-pop that positions itself between a less ethereal Paul Buchanan and a less chilly Ute Lemper.

An autumnal album. Beautiful. It enters among my favorites of this 2011.