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Rating: 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.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Fade Into You (04:55)
I want to hold the hand inside you
I want to take a breath that's true
I look to you and I see nothing
I look to you to see the truth
You live your life
You go in shadows
You'll come apart and you'll go black
Some kind of night into your darkness
Colors your eyes with what's not there
Fade into you
Strange you never knew
Fade into you
I think it's strange you never knew
A stranger's light comes on slowly
A stranger's heart without a home
You put your hands into your head
And then smiles cover your heart
Fade into you
Strange you never knew
Fade into you
I think it's strange you never knew
Fade into you
Strange you never knew
Fade into you
I think it's strange you never knew
I think it's strange you never knew
02 Bells Ring (04:32)
Bells ring into the night
Like a mystery
Sounding at night
Hold your throat
And arm together
And see the light that goes away
Leave my heart down by the water
He spins inside my soul
It isn't true but you follow
Just hold me down by the water
They say you look like
I'm gonna leave her
Look up to see the weakness
In the sky
Nobody's eyes are bright and starry
Nobody wants to know your reason why
Hold your hands out towards the water
In front of me to know I'm with you
Don't put it all into your hero
Look on if you believe
Look on if you believe
Don't want to say that I'm through with it
Just want to be
Right by your side
Right by your side
03 Mary of Silence (06:02)
Oh Mary of Silence
You pick my heart with a smile
Oh sweet Mary
Come inside for a while
Help me get a hold on you
Or I will
I thought of myself beside you
Take me into your skin
Oh, Sweet Mary of Silence
Oh, Sweet Mary of Silence
We have a steady confusion
You're looking at fear
It doesn't seem like the first time
You walked out in a hurry
I look in
In your window
To check my head in your pane
My last thoughts
They come to me
I can't take the pain
Oh, Sweet Mary of Silence
Oh, Sweet Mary of Silence
Help me walk with you
To the sky in ?
Shuddering in myself...myself
Oh where
Oh where
Oh where
Sweet Mary of Silence
Sweet Mary of Silence
Sweet Mary of Silence
04 Five String Serenade (04:24)
This is my five string serenade
Beneath the water we've played
And while I'm playing for you
It could be raining there too
This is my five string serenade
Beneath the water we've played
And while I'm playing for you
It could be raining there too
And on my easel I drew
While I was thinking of you
And on the roof of my head
In came my five string serenade
His is my five string serenade
Beneath the water we've played
And while I'm playing for you
It might be raining there too
And on my easel I drew
While I was thinking of you
And on the roof of my head
In came my five string serenade
This is my five string serenade
Beneath the water we've played
And though I'm playing for you
It might be raining there too
This is my five string serenade
07 Unreflected (03:42)
Once it's life's fortunate
Isn't this so
The unreflected feeling
Of a shortened flattened soul
The life that cuts the cold
Now is in your past
In our memories
We don't have much to say
We don't have much to say
We don't have much
Follow anybody
Is that what you do
Maybe it transfits to
Don something else to do
Now we know what we'll be in the past
Another story
Another life that's left
Another life that's left
08 Wasted (05:31)
After I stuck my hands
Into your ground
And pulled out somebody else's son
I felt a little unfortunate
A little mistake
I felt like I'd been wasted
All day long
All day long
After I bent myself to my knees
And raised my hands up
Right above my head
I felt a little
A little bright patch
I felt like I'd been wasted
All day long
All day long
After I took my eyes
From the west
And brought myself back
To my place
I felt a little light for a while
A little light stone
I felt like I'd been wasted
All day long
All day long
09 Into Dust (05:36)
Still falling
Breathless and on again
Inside today
Beside me today
Around broken in two
Till your eyes shed
Into dust
Like two strangers
Turning into dust
Till my hand shook
With the way I fear
I could possibly be fading
Or have something more to gain
I could feel myself growing colder
I could feel myself under your fate
Under your fate
It was you
Breathless and tall
I could feel my eyes turning into dust
And two strangers
Turning into dust
Turning into dust
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Other reviews
By Mario
Hope Sandoval whispering to you indolent and aching among the fabric: 'you will end up asleep or in love among the folds of this album'.
If Rock and Roll is dead... this (album) is the moon on its grave, or rather, the reflection of the moon on its grave.
By Jam
Hope Sandoval has an ethereal voice. Not of this world. Intangible and sensual.
'Fade Into You' is just the first track of an (almost) perfect album.
By paolofreddie
"Fade Into You" is one of those ballads you can always count on: magical, suspended in another dimension.
Mazzy Star's contribution to the music of the time is more substantial, original and magical: no anger, or rather, anger suffocated by sweetness and abandonment.
