I wasn’t sure where this would land, but sometimes you just have to dive in. Take a chance because of a word or an image. I mean, the album cover reminds me of Torment and Toreros by Marc & the Mambas, the name of the band is great, and it all looks good on paper. I was intrigued by the sonic references this Portuguese band had attached to their press release, but you never know. I’m familiar with words like Echo & the Bunnymen, Jesus and Mary Chain, Post-Punk, and Shoegaze but I have very few connections to phrases like Sufi music, Phrygian scales, folk traditions, and “global lens”. But curiosity won, so I took it for a spin.
First hit was amazing. The title track, “Blood & Honey” pushed out with some low buzzing rumble under a jangle of guitar that slid like some Screaming Trees trip into a Mazzy Star skyline. Think Gary Lee Conner on Dust. It throws me a WorldGaze curveball, and it’s right over home plate. Laura Calado’s vocals just pull everything together, moving from that Hope Sandoval enchantment into a melodic Kristin Hersh sharpness without missing an emotion. It’s ethereal and anthemic, moving up and over the oceans into some Middle Eastern dream pop ache and shimmer.
Then things pick up with “El Saif”. This one makes me think of a shadowy, over-caffeinated Rasputina trying to play songs written by Shocking Blue. Featuring Thomas Attar (Spindrift, Al-Qasar), this track pushes the planetary pulse into some trippy garage-rock psychedelic situations. Moving into the tribal post-punk haze of “Ashura” we take a quick breath before slipping under the eight-minute epic that is “Mayura”. This one starts out like a Tool song before getting interrupted by Calado’s seductive vocals. She moves somewhere between the dryness of Anita Lane and the sultry hypnotic tones of Elysian Fields’ Jennifer Charles. Poetic shots floating across driving rhythms, dreamworld fusion, ritualistic rhythms pushing brit-popped visions. Then around the five-minute mark, it just crashes into some grunge fuzzed dream that seems to meld the beauty of the Rose Chronicles with that Mark Lanegan grit.
“Além” is a little more solid, yet airy, sticking to a sweet melodic jangle worldbeat dreampop flow. A little more on the Cocteau Twins side, if they were playing a My Bloody Valentine cover for a C86 compilation. Then “Joy” suddenly moves into some sweet post punk with New Order echoes and a heavy melodic shoegaze crunch that pulls through the chorus. Portuguese Pop Underground. And then it’s time for the final number. “The Gospel (According to Summer of Love)”.
I almost don’t want to start this, even though it’s nine and a half minutes long, because when it’s done, it’s over. I’ll never hear it again for the first time. But the music keeps moving. It falls like a snowdrift, feather soft and chill. Spacemen 3 vibes, washing over a Julee Cruise whisper. A build up that washes over you like something off The Verve’s A Storm In Heaven, and then into some Death in Vegas heartache glory. And it glows and grooves and grows…
This album is a guiding light.
This is just … brilliant, in both stature and shine.
