Associates
Perhaps

We are in 1985 and another valuable album, "Perhaps," is released. Ten tracks are extensively described by Billy Mackenzie's voice and lyrics and Alan Rankine's music.

"Perhaps" has always struck me for both its musical beauty and the communication between the music and the mood. An album full of personal and hidden pain, unfortunately not fillable with the willpower to continue surviving the difficulties of life, asking... for help. Indeed, at 39, Billy, due to a painful depression, will take his own life, and not even his music will be able to save him. He had a unique voice, full of soul and energy beyond any level, with tonal shifts that characterized him in his genre, long intonations with full lungs, charismatic high notes, the song lyrics were dramas masked as a fake and temporary collective party, seemingly shareable, and he managed to describe his suffering under a veil of sun, in a special but above all ironic way. Like Freddy Mercury did, seen in the "I’m Going Slightly Mad" video of "Innuendo" where he ironically mocks death that is about to come, being aware of it, knowing perhaps that he had sought it in a certain sense (unlike Billy) and knowing that there is no escape and therefore living the moment of arrival, day by day, conveying it, shouting it to everyone in songs that will always remain etched in time.

In "Perhaps" the focus is the voice that entwines with the music in an eclectic effect. While Alan juggles with all the possible and imaginable instruments, violins, piano, cellos, basses, synthesizers, drums, in a progressive and charismatic way.

- "Those First Impressions" angelic voice making stunning solos followed by falsettos and trumpets

- "Waiting For The Love Boat" main effect instruments are trumpet and piano that chase each other in the chorus with the guttural voice at its peak

- "Perhaps" a desperate escape, an ever closer pain, an expressionistic voice caressed by choirs and synthesizers

- "Schampout" continuous gurgling laments of cellos with the overlapping voice in choruses as if for play or challenge

- "Helicopter Helicopter" an explosion of cellos with double basses and synthesizers pierced by a lamenting voice

- "Breakfast," one of the most beautiful songs of the '80s, background a piano and violins and cellos so clean that accompany the voice so sweet and deep to infinite expression like embodying a gesture, that of reaching the hand towards the sky to ask for help but being aware that weakness is stronger and not having the courage to say it, a pain in the heart. Truly stunning track

- "Thirteen Feelings" sustained percussion and the voice like the song of songs with captivating violin flourishes

– "Stranger In Your Voice" the happiest and brightest song of the entire album with a background of cheerful children and love-seeking cats and a man, Billy, trying to capture one by one the colors of the rainbow to place them in his soul in a happy scream

– "Best Of You" and "Don’t Give Me That Old I Told" are full of lightheartedness and resignation...

"Now I know how to love, now I know, I worry, and now I desire... I was lost, I was weak, I was full of lies, and so convinced of my fall, that I fell for my little sensitivity... I desire everything and I desire nothing in this world"....

This review is all for you, Billy... thank you from those who do not forget you and who will always carry your wonderful voice in the memory of time and thank you for helping other souls to live and survive even through your music and those who will know how to read between the lines of your pain.