The cover art for Mazzy Star’s new single, a simply framed depiction of a green-tinted nighttime world where phantom lights shine on water, should give a good impression of the music contained within, equally precise in its haze and shimmer. I could review the cover art alone and it would amount to the same thing as a review of the songs. But, as for those, they’re gentle beauties, full of an accidental energy that hangs as well on these performers as it did in the mid 90s, when they last made music together. Somehow they survived that era with aesthetic intact (their art was no fleeting impulse, despite the fleetingness of MTV airplay for “Fade Into You”) and their recent return seems as momentous as that of any long-dormant, much-revered band, even though it only requires the reunion of two people: Hope Sandoval and David Roback, as much meant for each other as PJ Harvey and John Parish, that pair of kindred souls across the ocean.
“Common Burn” tests their alignment, fading to life with acoustic guitar, electric guitar and vibraphone, each grasping for a different fragile melody but cohering, like emanations from adjoining rooms that converge with an unintended but immediately recognizable sympathy. Then Sandoval’s voice drifts in, so carelessly worn yet so expressive and full, to hold these melodies together and tell of the things that burn her: “your overcoat,” “your beauty.” It’s a love song, but also, stripping away the romance, a perfect song of musical reunion. Sandoval could be singing about musical infidelity, reminding Roback of their history and urging him to let her back in as a collaborator: “that common burn you know we have.” This is only discoverable to the extent that Sandoval’s words are decipherable, which they barely are. She still sings in the same voice that was once a surprisingly powerful murmur under the roar of Courtney Love and others (while her figure burned no less bright in the MTV glow). She’s no longer the antidote; now we have women like Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner, Lower Dens’ Jana Hunter and Beach House’s Victoria Legrand—all doing great work in the few years since Sandoval’s last solo appearance and all indebted to her in some way (and, lastly, all from Baltimore, weirdly enough, far from Mazzy Star’s L.A.)—to welcome her to the year 2011 she helped create, and hopefully guarantee her continued audience.
In the last minute of “Common Burn,” Sandoval drops back; the guitars intensify, soft drumming begins, but the elements of the music’s spell accumulate, assemble and align so subtly that the effect only halfway registers. This is not the magical coalescence mastered by similarly intuitive not-quite-contemporaries Pavement, where in hindsight all the different parts of a song are seen to have been intended for each other, sharing a common gravity. The gravity that holds Mazzy Star’s music together, the common burn, let’s say, is always audible, but a little hard to figure out, since each element is such a vapor, a ghost, in isolation. How can ghosts have gravitational pull? “Lay Myself Down,” a mid-tempo ache with pedal steel guitar that gets more screen time than Sandoval, inherits the latent, gathering energy that ends “Common Burn.” And yet it, too, drifts away in a serene flash.
It’s hard to tell just yet exactly what Mazzy Star’s larger plan is, post-reformation, but this new single works equally well as a preview of things to come or as a stand-alone document, a quick blur of passing lights as they circle around once more. The songs are teased out, a little indistinct, richer in mood than in structure, but in being so they also reestablish the band’s strengths, making them a perfect introduction to Mazzy Star’s second era. “Common Burn” is some kind of cosmic check-in. Time will tell the length of the stay.
