SKY CRIES
MARY – space between the drops
(CD,
trail)
Oh yes, the album title opens up some connotations, but
they are all wrong. Except maybe for the decade in which the basic idea of
progressive music was created, which is also the decade of Jimi Hendrix, but
there are no explosive, transcending guitar fireworks on here. Instead there
is a kind of progressive rock, perfectly executed and intriguingly
structured, that meanders between all kinds of nightly stations, from blues
to urban pop stretching over a slew of continents, and leaves a mark on your
mind like only early Pink Floyd was able to, only transferred a few decades
forward to the cold and radiating late Eighties / early Nineties. This
mixture of ambient trance and psychedelic pop music really is something
different.
Sky cries Mary formed in Seattle in 1990 when Roderick
and Amisa Romero came together. The band is their “baby” and they have
recorded and released about a dozen albums in the last twenty years
together. “space between the drops” collects some of the more sprawling,
ambient and textural tracks of their work. Some reworks as old as 2006 but
also new music. Roderick Romero is responsible for the music and the lyrics
and the more spoken vocals, Amisa for the sung vocals, and then there is
always a bunch of member adding music.
“space between the drops” takes you through a whole
lot of different stages and spheres. The first song, “Cornerman” sounds
like a detoned The The, the second one, “Elephant Song” takes you deep
into the urban dystopia of a subcontinent, with the percussive elements of
Arabia and the screaming echoes in the back of Asian nightlife with roots
down to Takemura Kondo or Ryuichi Sakamoto’s work in the Eighties. The
third track whines and whails with a definite Eighties Blues feel and the
longwinded harmonic vocals and structures you may remember from “the final
cut”. And so on. You get my point.
Sure, the definite hippie-viewpoint on life (“No hate
in your head, love in your heart”) and the mellowing drugs are something
you have to take up with, if you want to enjoy this music for what it is. It
is hard to say from the music, but in general Hippies are a nuisance due to
their know-it-all-attitude and their habit of smiling down any kind of
conflict. In my life I have learned that conflict is a constant factor in
everybody’s life and that you have to learn to make it something good.
After all, if there are no things going wrong, there
would be no reason to make them better, therefore pretending everything is
okay, is the wrong way. Conflict doesn’t mean you have to fight it out. It
is also possible to live with conflicts, that is called tolerance. Anyway,
it doesn’t so much radiate from the music but the general idea of
psychedelic music. But maybe the impression also comes from the soothing
atmosphere of the music, especially when Amisa Romero sings in her echoy,
angelic voice (e.g. on “These
old bones”). So I am wrong once again.
Summing up: An up to date version of psychedelic music,
no less. No revolution, no excessive experiments and no nervous breakdown,
more in an organic way. A soothing, heartwarming music to drive away the
rainy days.
