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| The
Independent Piano
Magic Andy Gill
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An Anglo-French band recording for a Spanish independent label, Piano Magic offer a sterling example of pan-European cooperation. Their music here though, is English through and through, a blend of barbed, revealing lyricism redolent of Morrissey's sadder musings, and calm, considered arrangements drawing on the quieter end of British indie rock. The opener, "Saint Marie", for instance, features echoing cascades of Durutti Column-style guitar over soaring synthetic strings, while the oceanic menace of "When I'm Done, the Night Will Fear Me", a proclamation of revenge in which "Black just got blacker/Attacked became attacker" recalls The Cure. There's some particularly impressive interplay between guitar and percussion, the combination of portentous tom-toms and delicate tracery if guitar lending a restrained but dramatic aspect to the melancholy "The End of a Dark, Tired Year". The songs close in on emotional turmoil of one form or another ˆ the lingering effect of a father's disappearance ("I am the Teacher's Son"), the urgent desire to return to a loved one "Speed the Road, Rush the Lights"), overwhelming passion "("Unwritten Law") and the self-explanatory numbness if "Help Me Warm This Frozen Heart", a title that could have slipped out from Morrissey's notebook. *** |