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Piano Magic, love and music. “Love & Music,” all that Glen Johnson needs. Simple, direct, yet so ethereal, unreachable. The second track of the sixth album is a manifesto not only of this group but of music itself. If we could fit everything, even force, within the semantic folds of the word love.
Because while the sense of inevitability that pervades all the tracks naturally emerges, a destructive force, only partially compensated by a steady rhythm, makes its way through seemingly closed doors.
“Disaffected” is instead an album of openness, even while exuding unease from every single sound. But it's an unease that no longer worries, as if sliding away, because there's only a need for love and music, the rest doesn't matter.
The slow advance of a bell introduces “You Can Hear The Room”, which marches hypnotically for six minutes punctuated by a solo as simple as it is nocturnal; yes, the night, before the awakening of “Love & Music”, a brief journey into Johnson's life, rhythmic, with offbeat drums and a guitar working quietly like a supporter and, like him, fundamental in constructing the circular and enveloping narrative. But there is no time to live the day because darkness returns; “Night Of The Hunter” testifies to an approach to song structure rather unusual for the band; deconstructed, yet also circular, melodious, soft: a night opposite in meaning to the previous, here one escapes, where before there was feeling. It's time for another awakening, but this time Angele David-Guillou's female voice guides us, through electronic reverbs and a guitar first hinted and then insistent, into a Kafkaesque world where everything is possible, yet everything is also impossible. Perhaps only alienation and madness, sublimated in a final three-minute electronic carpet, can rise as the ultimate solution.
Or it is just the hour of ghosts; “Theory Of Ghosts” and “Your Ghost”, in their simplicity trace a perfect profile of Johnson's “paranormal” visions, icy when he declares his theory; warm, on a bed of hinted keyboard in the background, when the ghost laughs and materializes looking at us from above. But the ghost continues to take the shape of whatever it passes through, and when it touches London in “I Must Leave London” it becomes almost sweet, pleading; an acoustic piece, simple and unusual, yet it fits perfectly, anticipating “Deleted Scenes”, a journey backward into essential electronics. In poverty, of means but not of ideas. The synthetic sound can't help but evoke thoughts of Kraftwerk. That backward step exemplified by essence is made explicit in the following track, “The Nostalgist”; a piece almost Slint-like in its progression of elementary phrases, concluding its aimless wandering in a downpour of rain. But after the rain, only the clear sky can erupt, that of “You Can Never Get Lost (When You’ve Nowhere To Go)”, introduced by a poignant acoustic guitar phrase and a vocal from a childlike lullaby that accompanies you to the last note.
Simply the album of the year.
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
01 You Can Hear the Room (06:22)
You can hear the room
On these long, winter nights
If you'd just, if you'd just
If you'd just be quiet
Beneath the word
There's the whisper of pipes
There's the stretch of the wood
There's the chink of the light
And the wires conduct
And the water runs down to the sea
But stay away from the drink
Stay away from the diaries
It doesn't matter
It does not matter
04 Disaffected (07:18)
Anything can happen in life
Especially nothing, mainly nothing
Once you know that, you're fine
Once you know that, you can retire
Set your clock by your heart
Work's overrated and it will kill you
Finish nothing you start
And start nothing you think you'll continue
I'm disaffected now
I'm disaffected now
And to this model i've kept
I surface at 3 in the clothes that i slept in
And though i'm drowning in debt
I'm richer through all the things i'm rejecting
And in a rare, certain light
I have a strange charm, i think you'd like me
And the rain brings me out
The rain makes me happy
I'm disaffected now
I'm disaffected now
Set your clock by your heart
Work's overrated and it will kill you
06 Your Ghost (05:35)
Your ghost, a white candle in this night
Smile broken, though eyes bright as carnival rides
You wander these streets, punch-drunk on the stars
As the lights are stubbed out in the neighborhood bars
Your voice, thin as smoke, barely exits your mouth
There's blood in your hair and a fire to the south
Your skeleton moves in a waltz with the stairs
And the well of your heart, full of noone who cares
Your words, a white wreath at the cusp of the hill
To mark of the kill, where the blood was spilled
You're the back of the mirror, you're the ghost of the tide
And i would die twice, if you stayed tonight
(don't stay tonight)
07 I Must Leave London (03:07)
I must leave London.
It is bad for my soul.
It’s making a hole that will erode me.
I cannot subscribe.
I cannot tow the line.
And Robert Elms, you’re selectively blind.
She shall not miss me and I care not ‘cos she’s doing me in and she’s wearing me thin.
A last goodbye to the Boundary Estate - you stole my heart in Summer rain.
A last goodbye to the Boundary Estate - you stole my nerve but never again.
She shall not miss me and I care not ‘cos she’s doing me in and she’s wearing me thin.
Where the Queen makes way for the Burger King.
Goodbye to the stench.
Goodbye to the din.
08 Deleted Scenes (03:59)
You're life's like a comic book
All shadows and childhood fantasy
The people you love, disguised
In a velvet glove biography
But i recognize what's going on:
Deleted scenes
And when your eyes go out
You play them back, as broken dreams
I don't get you anymore
I don't get you anymore
I don't get you anymore
I can't respect you anymore
You got a letter from an old friend
Asking why you never spoke again
You leave your lovers cast in amber past
And those times you can't evoke again
I don't get you anymore
I don't get you anymore
I don't get you anymore
I can't respect you anymore
You're in denial, you're not on trial
09 The Nostalgist (03:58)
I can’t get on. I can’t get on.
Because I live in the past and it’s too strong.
I can’t get on.
I can’t get on.
Because I live in the past and it’s too strong.
And the present is imperfect.
And the future, well, it’s conditional.
And the past’s a foreign land that I’m trying to understand.
And all the girls are framed in the order that they came.
And the best friends do their worst to remind me that I’m cursed.
And I’d just like to say that I’m sorry to everyone that just wants to get on, that just wants to get on but I...
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