SOLANACEAE - Solanaceae

With a past as a guitarist in several notable doom metal outfits (Saturnus, The Loveless, Blazing Eternity), Danish musician Kim Larsen made his name on his own terms with the project :Of The Wand And The Moon:, an essential starting point for anyone wanting to get to grips with the current state of European neofolk steeped in pagan, ancestral inspiration.

Keeping to the usual purity of his style, Solanaceae is nothing more than the new nickname under which Larsen has chosen to conceal his new collection of songs, built on a sense of mystic surrender, songs in which it is water and trees, wind and stone that speak ("Midnight Garden").

The guitar accompaniment is as bare and elemental as possible, Larsen's singing/spoken delivery monotone: minimal elements joined by violin, flutes and little else, all under the banner of utmost restraint, of the most magical and evocative intimacy ("The Swallows Spirals Through Them"). A handful of lines and a few arpeggios are enough for the opening "I Saw Them Through The Pines" to immediately transport us, lock, stock and barrel, into the ancient and eternal world of which Kim Larsen has always been a faithful chronicler and minstrel.

In the deepest contemplation unfold ceremonies of a lost harmony, like "O Deep Woods", a hallucinated fairy tale wrapped in an enveloping female whisper. The strings, the winds, the crystalline textures of "Nakkiel" vibrate with nostalgic spirituality.

Solanaceae is just a new name for an artist who revisits his usual blueprint with his usual, well-established skill. He's backed by the customary carousel of familiar faces (Germany's Sonne Hagal, America's Unto Ashes, from whom both versions of "The Blood Of My Lady" are drawn, featured on the latter's self-titled and contemporaneous album) and up-and-comers (Solblot, Novemthree).

Solanaceae is a love story. Simple, evocative, poignant songs that follow one another in procession. There's nothing else on this record. Nothing else is needed.

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05/05/2009