Increasingly ethereal and innocent, Karen Peris's voice is the true trademark of Innocence Mission. This doesn't mean that the caresses of Mike Bitts' bass and the elegant simplicity of Don Peris' guitar touch are a simple framework for the group's always refined chamber-folk-pop. In truth, it is precisely the soft and introspective instrumental approach of the two musicians that makes “Midwinter Swimmers” one of the most intense and successful pages of the Peris couple's long career.
Innocence Mission puts that naivety back at the center of their music naive and childish which is ineluctably linked to memories, to that bygone time which can only be relived by renouncing the seduction of consumerism and the superfluous. No saccharineness or melodic pandering: the songs of “Midwinter Swimmers” are built on valuable and simple arpeggios and airy harmonies, which slide with an impressive naturalness (“This Thread Is A Green Street”), touching on a neo-classicism often entrusted to notes crystalline and essential, or to courtly and candid piano notes that caress the soul (“The Camera Divides The Coast Of Maine”).
Those of the new Innocence Mission album are snapshots in which the details are the true protagonists of the arrangements. The piano sound of the otherworldly “We Would Meet In Center City” brings together noble neoclassical traits, dream-pop echoes and neo-symphonic suggestions full of urgency and feeling; with equal ardor the fluid folk-jazz of “John Williams” smells of innocence and the first stirrings of a genuine sensuality.
Subtle psychedelic textures offer further creative impulses, touching on the saudade in the delicate bossa nova of “Your Saturday Picture” and in the even more intense “Sisters And Brothers” and the magic of West Coast music in “Orange Of The Westering Sun”. However, it is in “Cloud To Cloud” that the magic of “Midwinter Swimmers” is finally contained, a slender melody that a rich intertwining of arrangement and composition elevates to a moment of pure beauty.
Never so expansive and generous, Innocence Mission deliver one of their best albums ever. Songs endowed with incisiveness and harmonic clarity, a record that enhances the most mystical and sentimental nature of folk until the last, precious notes of “A Different Day”, a song that will hardly leave you indifferent.
12/17/2024
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM