The Open
The Silent Hours

Have you ever wondered why beautiful things always come to an end?

The most beautiful moments of our lives last a moment, and even if they are long, they pass in a second. Sometimes I am afraid of all this; afraid I won't be able to hold on to the beautiful things I have because just a fraction of a second is enough for them to vanish into thin air. Like listening to this "The Silent Hours", light, dreamlike, and tinted with sky blue; you hear the first notes of "Close My Eyes" the opening track and a jet of colors floods us, overwhelms us, leaving us bewildered. "The Open" is the name of the band; they come from Liverpool and had already made a mark with the EP "Never Enough". The full-length debut is disorienting, imbued with spacey phantasmagorias molded on long voice-instrument sections as in "Bring Me Down", "Lost", and "Coming Down"; the hallucinatory and psychedelic guitars of Jon Winter cut the 10 tracks in half and the voice of Steven Baylay seems to fall from the sky. "Just Want To Live" and "Elevation" are splendid ballads immersed in an array of keyboard reverberations (Alan Dutton, by the way, the cover designer), reminiscent of early Verve, the "Shoegazer" of the early '90s. Scott Holland and Jim Reynolds remain, respectively on drums/bass, whose not easy task is to calm the momentum of the first three, resorting to moments of pause that soon turn into overwhelming crescendos where distorted guitars come back to life together with reverbs and delays in a single flow.

The ghosts of Cure, Cocteau Twins, and Chameleons resurface in these decadent and romantic-sounding tones, but it all is very beautiful. An album that makes me dream and that I have been replaying nonstop since the postman rang my doorbell and delivered it to me after I paid the "modest" sum of € 27.30 on delivery. Yes, the only downside is that for now, it is only available as an import, so, in addition to the already increased price, the shipping costs are added (in my case). But for good music, this and more. In the current landscape where little good is found, especially among big names, these little-known Liverpool adoptees are a genuine surprise.