Spell
Seasons in the Sun

“Far from men, he flies so high.

And only when he dies will he touch the ground”

...

Darkness, sugar cubes.

Twelve little candies. Twelve short tales of death.

A fantastic selection of forgotten tracks from the sixties, a cover album therefore...

...

In praise of basements, attics, dust...an old juke box dreamily coughs...

The music is a kaleidoscope of misty colors. Three-quarters melancholy, one of lightness.

The dealers of such delight are a second-class devil and a dark witch. He is the nonchalance of someone who passes by chance, she is the whisper of someone who speaks to ghosts.

Beautiful the yin and yang of the voices. Also beautiful is the pure cinema of these little songs suspended between kitsch and elegance.

Something very classic, but that's not what matters. It's those colors, it's that vortex.

Moreover, you go even where you don't expect. There's a dip into folk, rockabilly, and even poetry in music. But, even when one ventures a bit further, the flutter and airiness reign supreme. It's pop, beautiful...

Only songs of death, as we were saying.

So here is the lonely cowboy besieged by ghosts, the girl who by the sea found an endless slumber, the little bird that only when it dies will touch the ground.

...

Lee and Nancy as a categorical imperative, but with neither a nymph nor an ogre, after all, those two are archetypes. And even if hell here is a bit less hell and paradise a bit more paradise, it's nonetheless about hell and paradise.

And then, as someone wrote, “Phil Spector meets the Shangri-las in a rainy English alley”.

But also the fake perverse and the fake innocent intertwining to create for a moment an illusion truer than true. And it's like glancing at a diary full of hearts and photos cut from magazines.

To hold it all together a bit of pop wave science and a taste for the macabre brought into full sunlight.

But now the introductions...

The second-class devil is Boyd Rice, the toughest guy in apocalyptic folk.

The dark witch is Rose McDowall, a fabulous dispenser of angelic “la la la” for the likes of Death in June.

But let's leave our two heroes.

Have you ever heard of Priscilla Paris? Of Twinkle? Of John Leyton? They are just a few of the lesser-known figures honored here.

Do you know anything about something called death discs? It's the subgenre that this “Seasons in the Sun” refers to. Darkness and sugar cubes, as we were saying initially...

After all, pop and death have always been safe havens. Close your eyes forever and no one will bother your soul.

Close them for a moment and it will be paradise.