Piano Magic
Disaffected

THE REVIEW

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.