Seasons of Your Day
– Mazzy Star
Ten months ago, in the dead of winter, My Bloody Valentine
emerged from the chaos of a sonic universe they in large part created to eschew
capital letters and release their first new published material since the early
1990s. The result, an album called mbv, was so stunning that those who
obsess over such things still remain flabbergasted at the reality of Greatest
Expectations: Met.
The indie calendar has not yet seen so many moons that a
context exists for such a vanishing-and-latent-return sequence of events. Moreover, the genre is relatively lacking in
the types of minor deities whose disappearance and re-emergence would trigger
ripples in the harmonies of the universe.
But autumn has raised the second shocking return of 2013, and Mazzy Star,
with new album Seasons of Your Day,
now strongly imply that maybe we should reconsider our appreciation for deities
of all sizes.
It is no exercise in trolling to suggest that Mazzy Star
participated in the same type of genre-gilding as did My Blood Valentine, at
roughly the same time, and to roughly equal effect. The 90s were paced with a trio of albums from
the group, each of which grew incrementally more deconstructed and
atmospheric. By the time 1996’s Among My Swan landed with a whoosh of feathers,
its tendency toward obliquely-angled beauty seemed as though it had reaped ultimate
rewards and penalties. Rewards: it was arguably one of the decade’s
best-sounding, most interesting albums.
Penalties: it was not necessarily
the type of thing well cut out for a generation of “Alternative” listeners who
still believed in the concept of Hits on the Radio.
There had been hits before:
for instance, the woozy haunting of “Fade Into You” from 1993’s So Tonight That I Might See. In an early-90s sky thick with angels (Dolores
O’Riordan, Tanya Donelly, Harriet Wheeler,) Hope Sandoval floated as well. Among
My Swan, however, was different. It
was floating combined with disintegration: Beauty In Entropy. There was a career-best song on it (“Flowers
In December”) that in a just world would have lingered for months on the radio;
but by then the radio had rotted.
And then, with a whoosh of feathers, Mazzy Star disappeared.
A shame, too, because it turned out they were right. Melody was about to be deconstructed to
within an inch of its indie life in the aughts.
But somehow while OK Computer
lit a bonfire for such things in 1997, in 1996 Among My Swan fizzled out.
Anyway. The leadoff
track of the new album recalls the re-arrival panic of mbv in that, for all of the time away, there is no failure to immediately
reward excessive hope. “In the Kingdom”
moves with the deliberate pace of ultimate assurance. A few bars of organ; a few bars of lounging guitar;
a lazy snare drum. Like the cicadas,
they are back.
In 17 years, the band have not opted to turn up the lights,
not even a little. There are shadows and
intrigue and warm desire everywhere.
Inevitably, because it is nighttime and Ms. Sandoval sounds gloriously
fetching, there is singing about trains.
(Always, in the heat of an evening in which Things With a Lady Are
Afoot, there is a train involved. Even
if only in the distance.)
Also, there are quite a few Hey, Hey’s in this song, which
helps to remind us that 1) the band seem to have made this album because making
it felt like the best thing ever, and 2) there is still ample room for Indie
Irony here. “In the Kingdom” is no
rollicking singalong. There will be no
power chorus. It is languid and smoky
and dark. But hey, kids, rock and roll.
Quality and rapture level now at 12, we crash
unceremoniously back into 1997. Follow
up track “California” is the type of evocative and spare arrangement that
sounds very much like a middle track from a Belly or Kristin Hersh album of
that decade. A single acoustic guitar
does most of the heavy lifting here, and Sandoval’s voice sounds suspended in
the—you guessed it—dark of the stage. As
for California? “It’s so far, far away.” There is distance everywhere:
I think
I’ll fly across the ocean
I can watch
the sky turning gray
I think I’m
going back
For all of the darkness and separation, however, there are
gems gleaming from everywhere in the tracklist.
“I’ve Gotta Stop,” for instance, might be about a strained relationship,
but it purrs with the grinning knowledge that stop she almost assuredly never
will. And it isn’t just her: “You seem to seem to say you’ll never go.”
The genius of Mazzy Star has heretofore been their flawless
ability to soften focus: of the lyrics,
of the playing, of everything up to and including the album art and
photography. The results are destined to
intrigue, because an infinite amount of squinting, rewinding, or conjecturing
will never be enough to decipher and fill in the gaps between what the band
intend and the tiny amount about which they actually get to specifics. The overwhelming majority of songs seem to
operate this way, and when they don’t, when the band rotate the dimmer switch
back toward The Light, it suddenly feels like ecstasy.
“Flowers in December” reaped the benefits of rare clarity on
Among My Swan, and this time around
the tour de force is track 7 “Lay
Myself Down.” There is actual organized
percussion here—manifesting something close to an actual Beat—and across and
through the song’s framing, pedal steel is permitted to wander and
enchant. For one precious song on Seasons of Your Day, everything almost
makes sense. One can sense this being a
bit outside of the band’s M.O., an impression reiterated by Sandoval repeatedly
wondering, “Did I forget?”
Perhaps, yes. And
thank you.
If the remainder of the album tends toward opacity, none of
it must strain to be gorgeous. There are
additional charming instrument cameos, including harpsichord, resonator guitar,
harmonica and quite a few others; all of them seem to frolic in the space and
quiet of the album’s larger structure.
And then, on the other side of all of that loveliness, we arrive at the
unlikeliest denouement: a dirty, crooked
abrasion of a blues track, “Flying Low,” stretching and scratching through the
album’s final seven minutes. Bathos is everywhere: there are pixies in the muds of Mississippi,
and (fucksake) the band may have nipped a bit of melody from Foreigner
(Fuck. Sake.) at the 2:10 mark.
Should Mazzy Star elect to create more albums, either next
year, the year after, or 17 years from now, it seems reassuringly unlikely that
the optics of their songs will change with their re-emergence. And thank goodness for that. Like Hope Sandoval sings a few songs into
this latest effort, “I know you’ve been missing me.” And she’s right. The sensation of peering into the dark
blurriness of these songs, each of them a bit scary and all of them warm, beautiful
and captivating, is not very unlike a search for the face of the divine.
Shall it always remain a bit beyond clarity.
Keepers 1-10
October 2013
