Paul Roland
1313 Mocking Bird Lane

1313 Mocking Bird Lane is the address of a charming little family depicted in a sitcom similar to my beloved Addams.

The dad is a sort of Frankenstein, the mom a vampire, then there are all the others: werewolves, freaks, and so on. The house you see on the cover is theirs, appropriately funny and decaying and horror and psychedelic to boot.

The series aired in the sixties, and that cover, so Roland-like, manages in one fell swoop to pay homage to two polar stars of ours: his fabulous horror/fantasy imagery and those strange years when probably someone had put something in the water.

...

This story begins in the English countryside where we find, near a ditch, a tramp giving air and rest to what remains of his feet. During this operation, he contemplates the shoes next to him. Those shoes, recently acquired, are the best he's ever had, but they are also a tad too big. So, comparing them to the ones he wore until the day before, comfortable, sure, but with too thin a sole, he cannot decide whether the discomfort of a loosely fitting shoe or the annoyance of moisture between the feet is worse. Since our man is a wandering soul, the matter is certainly not secondary, for what does one wander with if not with feet and shoes?

But it is time for chatter to give way to action, and so our tramp hears a voice behind him, but that voice has no body to accompany it. "Don't worry, even if you don't see me, I'm here." The tramp, sure he's not drunk, or not yet drunk anyways, is astounded, turns pale, and trembles with fear, also because he can see plainly that there is no one there. The voice, however, insists, "Ah, so you don't believe me! Perhaps a few stones might convince you."

What happens next is enough to make you drop dead on the spot: without anyone moving them, stones lift off the ground and hurtle at the poor tramp. "Do you believe me now?"...

Let's now move to the room of a child who, by candlelight and semi-hidden by blankets, is avidly reading. The book is "The Invisible Man" by H. G. Wells, and for him, it is a kind of imprinting. What a thrill to follow, breath held, the perils of that voice in perpetual escape from a world where it finds no place except in the void space of the unseen.

After meeting the funny tramp, the escape continues to Victorian London, the place where it all began. There, after taking refuge with an acquaintance, the voice recalls the moment of the experiment.

The body becomes first transparent like glass, then elusive like mist, and finally a kind of nothing that is not nothing, since, even if unseen, it continues relentlessly crashing against the world.

Well, the candle is almost out, and it has perhaps gotten a bit too late. The child finally closes his eyes.

It is the moment when the contents of reality become first transparent like glass, then elusive like mist...

...

You can recognize Paul Roland immediately, a few seconds, and you're in his world. It might be that crystalline and refracting sound, or that voice a tad childlike and a tad nasal, like a scatterbrained aunt, think, or a deliciously snobbish Mother Matilda.

Then, beyond that sound and beyond that pale and absorbed nasal quality, there is also a strong time machine sensation, that yes, you'd be in the eighties, but you're also in Victorian London and that of the sixties.

In short, Roland manages to be doubly retro and takes you through the strange luminescence of two ultra-thin layers of mist that overlap in his very personal Elsewhere.

This sweet strangeness arises from three sparks appearing in the varied sky between childhood and adolescence; after all, it is as children and young adolescents that we shape what we will then be forever.

The first spark links childhood gaze and the doors of perception and manifests in the flight away of objective reality, not even through will, but as if dragged by who knows what. It's the old affair of the soul wandering off on its own without asking permission, namely that phenomenon known as out-of-body experience. Apparently, ours would have lived it several times in tender age. Well, I prefer not to stick my nose into the esoteric, after all what does the beak know about things like these?

However, allow me to fly with the imagination to Aunt Patti's scarlet fever, who knows, perhaps in that case too the soul went off wandering free and blissful.

For the second spark, we must return to the room of that child and to "The Invisible Man". Well, still half-hidden by blankets and still by candlelight, that child continued reading, first American horror comics, then Lovecraft, Conan Doyle, M.R. James, Poe, eventually achieving a vivid imaginary overflowing with werewolves, ghosts, murderers, mad scientists seen, or glimpsed, in a shimmering, opiated dimension.

The last spark is the TV appearance of the divine child Marc Bolan. But, beware, aside from the initial shock due to that boogie endowed with supernatural lightness, it will be going back to the Tyrannosaurus era that ours will truly see the light. His desert island disc is indeed still "Unicorn", the album where the first and second Bolan play evenly. There witches and children coexist, entering and exiting the hippie paradise, passing back and forth through the glam one.

Well, once all the dots are connected, all that remains is to add Syd's suspended step, a tad of weird folk, and perhaps a dusting of baroque and dark. This way, we get "Danse Macabre" and "The Cabinet of Curiosities", his great masterpieces of the eighties.

From then to now, Paul Roland has continued to make beautiful records, moving within the formula described above, occasionally preferring the folk pop side, sometimes the more baroque and classical one. At times he has exaggerated with hyper-arrangements and various romanticisms, losing, in part, the refreshing briskness that distinguishes his better works. It should be said, though, that even in the less inspired moments, he always places some fantastic song.

In recent years, however, ours is back to being in extraordinary form. This "1313 Mocking Bird Lane", for instance, is a treat. He blows a couple of Roland ballads in your face that are to die for, some of that pop that makes you at least flutter, some off-kilter rock numbers, wobbly and suspended psych stuff.

So hail to the acid keyboards, to the fuzz-tinted vibraphone, to Joe Strummer honored in the form of a little song, to that ever-so-slightly incongruous voice...

Then when you get to "Summer of Love", the definitive declaration of love to the sixties, well, the candle is almost out, and it has perhaps gotten a bit too late...

And as we are about to close our eyes and the contents of reality become first transparent like glass, then elusive like mist, here comes an off-key little song coloring the first dream that arrives.

And it's a beautiful dream, damn...

A really beautiful dream...

Trallalla...