AMANDINE – solace in sore hands

(CD, Fat Cat)

After soothing our broken hearts with the wonderful “waiting for the light to find us” Mini-Album last year, Amandine, the quartet from Sweden provides a full length album with eleven sparks of shining beauty to further help us along the road. Where that road will lead to? This kind of question is too pragmatic and too much rooted in the clear-cut, empirical and result-oriented status quo of our times, where efficiency and profit reign over beauty and well-being. Always looking ahead and planning and plotting your next steps will lead you to a live full of problems and anger. Take it from their hands, as gentle as water dropping from a well and as intuitively as sitting on a log in the wood and breathing in the atmosphere, the question is not where but how? This road is a gently winding, non-asphalted pathway leading through lush wildsides and fascinating plains and mountains. Wherever you look, you can let the beauty and infinity of god’s creation impress your senses. And there is no way to judge how long this road is, because after the next curve there is always another beautiful hillside or more nature. If that threatens you or if you are afraid that living along this road could be dull, then you have fallen victim to the modern world, full of its fake promises of electronic gadgets and pay-for-entertainment offers. Life is different. The basics of life are still connected to nature and nature is analogue, chaotic and beautiful.

At Cracked we like music that is true or real in any kind of the meaning. Not authentic in the Alan Lomax definition, but music where we feel that the people producing the music do have their hearts in it. And we do admit to a strong penchant towards songs that come from a collective of people getting deeply into their instruments and playing in the studio the same way they could on stage or on a street corner. Aside all the brutal noise and digital mashes, the electronic experimentalism and free improvisation, we long for the soothing gentleness of music rooted in the dirt of the ground where nature still reigns free. We like the woods and the grass and the fresh air. Amandine are that sort of a band. From the slowly plucked mandolin and glockenspiel of the first track “Faintest of sparks” to the ringing out of the last note, these songs rest in the melancholia and relief of being part of life’s endless cycle.

Most of the songs still plod along in the same slow beat, which reminds me of “I walk and I cry as my heartbeat keeps time with the drag of my shoes” and the lonely walk through town, hands in pockets, neck between shoulders to keep away the cold chill and to “warm the frozen feeling eatin’ at my soul”, will forever be the best rhythm to bemoan and ponder over lost loves and chances. Be it in straight time or three quarters, be it with a slightly distorted electric guitar offering echo and resonance or the wide open arrangement of just a few notes plucked, be it in full band swing or all alone, it will be the same beat over and over again. It is a simple way, but it is the most basic and direct way. Some of the songs start a little faster – though velocity is always relative to the basic measure and the average of the overall songs – like “Silver Bells”, which adds a fine edge to the songs and the album. For all it is worth, the mystery of the beauty of the simple approach will never be seized, not in a hundred years. Accordion, glockenspiel, strings and percussions all help to ride the same wave. If anything, Amandine have strengthened and focused more on minimalism and reduction compared to the former records.

It will remain a mystery forever why a lot people call this kind of songwriting Americana, when the best bands in the field come from all over the place, like Hobotalk (Scottland) or The White Birch (Norway), like A life, a song a cigarette (Austria) or even Element of Crime (Germany). As we have said now and then, the prairie is everywhere, but mostly it is a feeling in your heart. Then again there is the fact that the band themselves declares to see themselves more in the vein of bands like Iron & Wine or Magnolia Electric Co, which at least shows that things are never as easy as they probably seem at first sight. After all, what are borders and nations in regards to the brotherhood of men and women resting in the same, shared feeling of being part of nature and singing the joy. This kind of life is hard work, but it probably the most fulfilling kind of life there is. Solace from sore hands.