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vote
8.0
- Band:
Jonathan Hultén - Duration: 00:46:32
- Available from: 31/01/2025
- Label:
-
Kscope Music
Streaming not yet available
The experience (excellent) with the tribulation is definitively left aside, Jonathan Hulten can finally devote himself to his solo career.
The new “Eyes of the Living Night” is in fact the first work in which the Swedish was able to focus their forces 100% and, after the already excellent “Chants from Another Place” of 2019, the result is an extremely intimate job , night and somewhat original.
However, let's forget any reference to Metal: in the eleven songs present here you travel on the tracks of a music that based its foundations on an elegant sound, between the acoustic and the electronic, which recalls what the ulver did in the “War of The Roses ”, dirty with the event by guitars and other instruments borrowed from rock.
With a rainbow of influences ranging from folk, going from the classic atmospheres of the most Gothic songwriting, up to lapping Pop territories dear to the last ghosts, Hultén gives free rein to its demons through music that sounds nocturnal without ever arriving on beaches of darkness extreme.
In this sense, a song like the splendid “afterlife” draws touching melodies through vocal lines never discounted, in a constant but never excessive crescendo.
There is also a lot of psychedelia, as in the nursery rhyme Barrettiana “Falling Mirages” or in the minimal “Falling Mirages”, the latter with a blues flavor, or in the almost country folk of “Vast Tapestry”. There is also a veiled tribute to the Beatles with the brazen “Starbather”, with a more rock sound and supported by hammond rugs with an exquisitely vintage taste.
This “Eyes of the Living Night” is not an easy disc, given the variety of different atmospheres that require patience to be fully assimilated, so much so that going from the robust acoustic rock of “The Dream Was the Cure” to the waltz of “Song of Transience ”can be disorienting, although everything falls into a very precise and cohesive context, thanks also to the production that helps to steal every detail and influence present in the furrows of the album. The evening ballad “Dawn”, with its piano supported by light electronic arrangements, seems to echo a certain Antony and the Jonhsons, and ferry us to the orchestral atmospheres of the splendid “The Ocean's Arms” to one of the highest moments ever for elegance e Melodic taste, together with the night soul of “Riverflame”
The Swedish musical DNA perfectly reflects its image, with a theatrical sound, which is hidden among the masks of different genres, obtaining an extravagant result, made of chiaroscuro and sound embroidery suspended in a time limbo that transcends fashions and trends.
Music theoretically not for everyone, but which has the potential to reach a decidedly heterogeneous audience thanks to a range of moods that do not create barriers.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM