As the
last track slips into silence it begs the question why 'Black and
White Boy' doesn't have his name liberally dropped into conversations
about what is hot in the current music scene.
Of course
the music business is all very hit and miss.
Labels
literally gamble on acts.
Will they
sell? (Always the bottom line).
Will we
get a return on our investment?
Yet is
seems obvious – well to me anyway – that with 'Fragile' we have
an album that with the promotional budgets that the big boys have
could sell massively.
It's a
body of work that quite simply never once drops the ball.
I sat in
the dark with headphones on and it felt like the music and lyrics
snipped the thread that anchored me to the earth.
Gravity
cancelled, and the weight of the detritus of life sluiced away
leaving me weightless.
From
about three songs in I was adrift and it felt good.
Sort of
dreamlike in how all earthly constraints had let go.
How often
can anyone say that about an album?
That
instead of the music becoming a soundtrack to the background of what
is going on, that instead life becomes the backdrop to the actual
album.
Fragile
is the perfect title when considered in the context of the lyrics,
but when the release is taken as a whole I just get the strength of
it all washing over me.
It has an
enveloping warm embrace that holds you safely still and silent as it
carries you towards the final track.
It's
simply beautiful, a real, very real, emotional tour de force that
eases rather effortlessly to that point where you listen to it all
and it means something to you.
I suspect
that very often that is exactly what artists want to do, to talk to
us, to communicate personally on a one to one level and make every
utterance something that we can feel a kinship to, and with Fragile
that has been achieved.
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