When we're young, we're drawn to darkness. It's a phase that most of us go through, from 12 or 13 usually as our bodies start to change. One of the great journeys in life.
Usually this is just a phase, something we shed as we transition to adulthood. Put in a drawer as we leave school for a job or university in search of the adult. But we need some music for those years, to tell the world that we can be dark, but that means we are interesting, and most importantly, attractive and mysterious.. This might sound flippant but it's not. It's important.
Magic Wands, from Nashville, Tennessee of all places, are soundtracking those important years for some as we speak. Just as The Bunnymen, The Cure and The Banshees did for me all those years ago. They're darkness lite. More lush and romantic, than actually dangerous and scary. More Cure than Banshees, and certainly swimming nowhere near the pools where The Birthday Party and The Gun Clubs lurked within the muddy reeds.
In many ways their latest album Switch reminded me most of all of the priceless opening sequence of Danny Darko. That haunting bike ride down a winding, curving hillside by a troubled teenage boy as darkness falls. All played out by the Bunnymen's imperious Killing Moon. That's the feeling you get here from track to track. It's consistent and perfectly judged and captured. Immersed in a certain sensibility and ambience.
This isn't an essential.record .It soundtracks a very specific journey, and one we can make and experience only once although it remains within us as long as we live. I've already taken this ride this, forty years ago now. That doesn't mean I didn't recognise and appreciate its arcs and contours again listening to this earlier this morning.
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