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thisdrowningman melancholiamylove
Artists: This Drowning Man
Title: Melancholia My Love
Genre: Wave / Alternative
Release Date: 18th January 2013
Label: Dance Macabre


Album Review

Just 2 years after ‘Big Faint Lane’, their highly praised debut album, the Hamburg based quintet THIS DROWNING MAN is pleasing us with their second output, named ‘Melancholia My Love’ and regarding to its content it´s hard to avoid the phrase “Nome nest omen”! There is this kind of blue verdigris all ten songs are overlaid with, like a screen of fog, entangled in the leafless branches of a late November wood. Yes, it's that kind of crape for the soul, (skilfully fabricated full of decoration and details) that makes ‘Melancholia my love’ reliant on the listener´s frame of mind and the weather outside. So let's shake off some colours and get inside…

The eponymous opener is a lovely piece of reticence and plainness, without to fail to outline that emotional state, which will become our shadow for next few songs. Soft piano tunes collide with clean guitars, preparing the space for the vocals, which irritate in the first moment because of the “other-than-all-the-others-timbre”, but you can feel, that its emotionality and sensibility will make it a good companion for the way the sound is going to run. ‘Home’ is taking that way straight on, with its verses full of smirking despair, which are circling around the longing chorus, galvanized with elegy and sadness, so like ‘Levitate’, whose catchy chorus feels like a lonely ship on a vast sea of dolorousness. To ward off any misunderstandings - it´s not that wailing and moaning kind of maudlin fortunately, there´s always some kind of understanding and approval in the air, such an attitude of “pain is for the weak”, what makes it all enjoyable sad without being too weepy.

‘Just buried’ is a sweet shining teardrop with its candy-like melody and faked happiness, which mirrors the same playful distress that became a brand mark for The “later days” CURE. So let me tossing in the fact that it´s really a joy to feel the band´s interaction and to realize the tricky fact that they give a hard fight to knock out any kind of stylistic definition. Is it Wave? Alternative or Indie Rock? Or just pop music with lowered saturation? In some way it’s all of it without forfeiting it´s homogeneity and interweaving. I can hear a pinch of THE MISSION, a few drops of THE CURE and sometimes even a bit of the later PSYCHEDELIC FURS but it doesn´t sound like a copy at no time. ‘Hope Machine Stop’ has some Goth rock references with its driving rhythm, layered keys and trembling guitars, ‘My November’ is filled with bittersweet pathos (like this “standing-on-the-edge- of-a-crag-with-outstretched-arms-watching-the-sea-with-a-smiling-ready-to-push-off”-feeling, you know?) and via ‘The Envy & The Fake’ and ‘A Copycat Thing’, both catchy gems with sentimental cut, we leave with ‘Red Tears’, a gloomy ballad, crawling down the floor like fog patches (on a late autumn day if you like, for returning to the first setting!)

So ‘Melancholia my Love’ is a monument to an emotion, a sentiment set to music and it´s fascinating how THIS DROWNING MAN manage to keep that melancholic and heavy-hearted density throughout the whole album. And, as strange as it may sound, this could become the only blemish I´m able to spot; partially that overall undertone is so dense, that it snatches the songs´ room for breathing, makes them become a single entity with blurred borders and convertible individualities. It´s a bit “forfeitable” in the end and that´s really a pity. But on the other hand an album named ‘Melancholia my Love’ has not so many emotional options! So let´s thrust aside those irrelevances for enjoying the celebration of a gorgeous and breath-taking mood (I don´t mind if you need candlelight and claret for that - let everyone seek heaven in his own fashion!)


Tracklist

01. Melancholia my love
02. Home
03. Levitate
04. Everyone's dark at heart
05. Just buried
06. Hope machine shop
07. My November guest
08. The envy & the fake
09. A copycat thing
10. Red tears


Line-up

Roland Klein – Vocals
Jürgen Hardt – Drums
Alexander v. Falkenhausen – Keyboards
Veiko Tüllmann – Guitars
Frank Haehnelt – Bass


Website

http://thisdrowningman.npage.de


Cover Picture

thisdrowningman melancholiamylove


Rating

Music: 8
Sound: 10
Total: 9 / 10





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