MOJAVE 3 - Spoon And Rafter

This time, Mojave 3, having bestowed classic status on a timeless work like "Excuses For Travellers", seem to have chosen the path of lightness: starting from the bucolic cover image, the atmosphere breathing through the tracks of the new "Spoon And Rafter" is animated by an airy pop sound, though always ready to conceal a streak of secret melancholy. Just like the figures at the edge of the cover, who wear diving suits and oxygen tanks for their picnic, suggesting the distance separating them from the idyllic landscape around them.

But if the English band's intent with this fourth album is not to crystallize their expressiveness within the intimate boundaries outlined by previous chapters, the results don't always seem to live up to the expectations raised.

The long opening suite "Bluebird Of Happiness" is indeed as disorienting as it is promising a start, born from a few piano notes laid over a placid bed of keyboards, onto which the pedal steel enters to define the song's main theme. After a moment of pause, like a held breath, a new melodic horizon opens up, resting on the entrance of the drums, before fading into a choral reprise of the initial theme.

With the appearance of the sunnier rhythm of the following "Starlite # 1" and "Billoddity", however, it seems that the band's sound, chasing new electronic touches and moog flourishes, wants to fill in those spaces that Mojave 3's music used to magically leave empty. This impression is confirmed by the fact that, while the previous album was dedicated to the journey, the opening lines of "Spoon And Rafter" immediately evoke the road back home: this very "homely" attitude coincides with greater layering and musical exploration on the part of the band, born from the ashes of Slowdive, which seems to want to move away from the familiar shadow of Nick Drake (evoked more than once by frontman Neil Halstead on his 2002 solo album, "Sleeping On Roads"), to draw closer to the direction taken by bands like Radar Bros. or, partly, Mercury Rev, with refined arrangements that don't skimp on strings, organ and piano.

The risk, however, is that the extra time spent in the recording studio ends up weighing down Mojave 3's essential acoustic chiaroscuro with frills that are anything but indispensable. It's no coincidence, then, that compared to the ironic tone and the British vaudeville spirit of tracks like "Battle Of The Broken Hearts" or "Tinker's Blues", more cloying than engaging, the album's more rarefied moments stand out as preferable: the drum puffs of "Writing To St. Peter", the gentle guitar embroidery of "She's All Up Above" and the romantically country banjo of "Between The Bars" have no trouble renewing the dreamy spell of Cowboy Junkies, even if Rachel Goswell's soft voice on this occasion limits itself to faithfully accompanying Neil Halstead's, without finding, as in previous works, its own personal solo dimension.

To feed the love-starved heart of "Spoon And Rafter", in short, those caressing melodies with which Mojave 3 always know how to wrap the soul once again seem to be enough: that alone, after all, is reason enough to remain grateful for the sensibility of Neil Halstead and his friends.

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29/10/2006