•
Rating: I believe that passion is a rare thing in contemporary music. Perhaps something can still be seen in songwriting... but everything is limited to being a clear drop in a decidedly opaque ocean. For Motorpsycho, this problem does not exist.
After an endless number of collections, "Angels And Daemons At Play" was released in 1997, and the passion I mentioned before does not take long to be discovered once again.
The inner booklet alone, a true photo album, materializes the color that the three Norwegians want us to "feel," inserting all the precautions, the little touches, that will become useful as the CD is played. Aware of their sonic imprint, I am literally amazed by listening to the introductory "Sidway Spiral I": a heartbreaking poem with shoegaze melodies whose female vocal harmonies (of an unsettling suaveness) recall a certain album named "Loveless"... Practically addicted, I await that sonic "after" that leads me to know "Walking On The Water" whose rhythms immediately appear 70's. Dirty guitar, damn bluesy, and bass on the same line, following a drum miked as only God knows. A heart attack begins to take hold of me, savoring the intro of "Heartattack Mac."
A whisper (still blues) followed by a dissonant and repetitive riff accompanies the listening towards a sonic apocalypse where the groove reigns supreme, lord of a world having a heart collapse that one can partake in repeatedly, if the aforementioned track is restarted. The incarnation of passion smells of dreams in "Pills, powders and passionplays [miss mitchell in the ladies room]", a track that starts a thread linking the following "In The Family" and "Un Chien d'Espace" so as not to distinguish the moment when the transition to "Sideway Spiral II" occurs. A transition that brings the mind back to the 70's, this time with an obsessiveness that makes one shiver, amplified and made malleable by the skillful addition of guitar slashes that sharpen the bass's very purpose; the unforgettable finale where the voice gets involved in the spiral for about ten seconds, until the piece's decline.
"Like Always" is the other face of the passion that the album intends to confess in silent secret: a song that intends to be desperately loved even if far from the possibility of it happening. A theme that ties with others "Stalemate", "Starmelt/Lovelight" and ends in a profane way with the famous "Timothy's Monster", a piece that seems to channel all the extreme sense of passion mixed with dream that the album has been able to express up to this point.
An exceptional record, in its own right. Decidedly passionate.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
08 Like Always (03:39)
Phrasemaking
wondering and pondering
how things might should go on
not really having fun
Endlessly
gazing up the staicase
of tomorrows pros & cons
such overwhelming concience weighing tons
Like always
Fly by night
from the glacier smile to hide behind
so precious and so kind
So sincere
no evidence of intelligence
took time to see it through
I had no will, no vision and no clue
Like always
Growing thinner
with a shiny smile
the world is shrinking
before the Eye....
Falling too
upon the gravel road
the lonely churchyard on the hill
with too much hate to kill
Nosebleed
reminding me of snowball wars
we often ran away
and hid untill last rays of the day
Like always
11 Timothy's Monster (04:16)
Interstellar caterpillar
levitate leviathan
We invocate our demon maggot
surf unholy psychopompus
on the sea of tranqillity
the whirlpool of my brainwaves of my mind
"One mans glory is another mans hell
you're onthe outside, never bound by such a spell
together in the darkness, alone in the light
I took it upon me to be yours, Timmy
I'll lead your angels and demons at play tonight......"
Climb onboard the mothership
the HQ of original sin
the interstate of evil wicked thought
the aspects of the force below,
will free your mind-they told you so
but Satan comes in many guises......
Loading comments slowly
