Mazzy Star
So Tonight That I Might See

Ah, walking alone through the city in the late-night hours of late July! The semi-deserted streets and squares, the cool breeze that occasionally rises giving us some relief, the muffled noises of creatures (natural and not) populating the urban belly. Everything is different compared to the daytime solar despotism, so are we. New sensations make their way into our spirit, and we see things in a new light: moonlight.

What better Virgil, then, than the voice of Hope Sandoval?

Austere artisans of a silvery and calm psych-pop-rock, hazy and mellow, Mazzy Star manage to concoct sophisticated potions in which folk, instrumental minimalism, and acidic guitar distortions become a magical fluid with irresistible allure thanks to Sandoval's astonishing singing. A sort of Morgan le Fay with a voice both spectral and sensual, she has the power to make us believe that the melodies and the litanies do not come from a specific point but rather seem to be like the reflection of the moonbeams bouncing sometimes on a wall, sometimes on a streetlamp, sometimes on a moth; reaching us finally with a “transcendental-earthly” modulation.

The album in question, regarded by the writer as their masterpiece, is a journey to the end of the night in which they find a miraculous balance between high-class easy-listening and targeted forays into psychedelic oases.

The blues of "Wasted" or the smoothened and mellowed shoegaze of "She’s My Baby" and, especially, "Bells Ring", counterbalance, for instance, splendid and languid ballads filled with an ancestral melancholy. "Fade Into You", perhaps the most radio-friendly track, opens our hearts with a sweet nostalgia for the time that passes relentlessly, and "Five String Serenade" (a cover by Love) is a chamber serenade arranged for tambourine, acoustic guitar, and violin that seem to be censers spreading the incense-voice of Hope.

"Into Dust" is a sweet farewell amidst the chirping of cicadas and the distant rumbling of cars, while with "Blue Light" it seems as if the ghosts of two ancient lovers materialize, dancing slowly in a secluded little square.

With the lunar eclipse of "Mary of Silence", we are catapulted into a dark and murky sabbath led by an organ raga; yet we can glimpse Sandoval singing in trance, with vacant eyes and dilated pupils swallowing every glimmer of surrounding light. The best song the Doors never wrote.

The title-track closing the album is a dissonant mantra a-lá Velvet Underground (almost a smaller and more "polished" sister to "Sister Ray"), in which Hope manages to perform the miracle of fusing Nico's funereal litanies with Reed's amoral declamations.

Enough rambling now: dawn is breaking, and I want to fall into a deep sleep that restores my being, just as "So Tonight That I Might See" has restored my spirit.