THE SOFT PINK TRUTH - Can Such Delightful Times Go On Forever?

Sooner or later, for an artist there comes a moment to capitalize on years of research and experimentation into something tangible and aesthetically captivating. Drew Daniel long ago shed his avant-garde musician's clothes, first embracing deep house on the previous album “Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This?“, before veering toward classical and symphonic music on the new project “Can Such Delightful Times Go On Forever?”, all in service of an accessibility that sets his solo work apart from the project he shares, under the name Matmos, with his partner Martin Schmidt.

It's well known by now that every Soft Pink Truth work comes with a question attached, but behind this latest album lies an emotional tension that seems at odds with the compositions' neoclassical aesthetic.

Piano, acoustic guitar, strings and harps take over (“Underneath (I)”), pushing aside the rhythm section and infecting decidedly more placid harmonies with flourishes and harmonic hints that remain unresolved (“Time Inside The Violet”).

Imagination once again serves as the connective tissue between almost Disney-like references (“L'Esprit De L'Escalier”), romantic touches arranged with an Arthur Russell-esque mood (“Mere Survival Is Not Enough”), and a brief but intense orchestral dissertation where lightness and grace create a moment of pure spiritual and emotional ascesis (“And By And By A Cloud Takes All Away”).

In this latest project shift, Drew Daniel again turns to the collage technique adopted for the recent Matmos album, placing descriptive tones and horror/thriller atmospheres on equal footing in perhaps the project's most successful piece (“Phrygian Ganymede”), a magic partly repeated in the splendid collaboration with Bill Orcutt on “Orchard”, an imaginative excursion into the world of chamber-folk that sounds almost like a message of hope, one that partly answers the question posed by the album's title.

Once again Daniel strikes a pleasing balance between erudite music and aesthetic elegance, perhaps less incisive and biting than in the past but equally interesting and original.

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06/02/2026