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Son of the Velvet Rat By My Side
Starfish Records
By My Side is a mood album, music I envision myself needing to hear at particular moments or places in time. The simplistic ballads are mystical, enlightened, and the haunting music is at its paramount. The penetrating pieces are beautiful, romantic, fragile, and magical. Dark melancholy permeates the lyrics laced with recurring themes of alienation and loneliness. Thoughts of disconnection and isolation accentuate the prophetic, foreboding song writing. The gloomy, echoing tunes are simplicity at its best.
Track listing:
01 Leaving You
02 Play a Ghost Note On My Soul
03 Phantom Song
04 Lunapark
05 Your Sweetest Smile
06 Holes
07 I Just Don't Know
08 Pave
09 Love Will Tear Us Apart
10 Are the Angels Pretty?
11 Reach Out
Son of the Velvet Rat was formed in 2000 as a solo project of the Austrian-based singer/songwriter Georg Altziebler, along with the musical talent of Robert Kres on violin and harmonium. It was originally intended as an experimental reaction to the predominance of the angst-ridden rock of today. Essentially Altziebler filters the misty, dreamy romanticism of Cohen and Drake through the 60-bpm, lo-fi indie rock. By My Side is their first full-length release, featuring minimalist ballads combined with reflecting vocals, disheartening orchestrations, and idyllic lyrics. The singing was done primarily on a small Fender tube amp, and the produced sound is one of a distant, eerie, chambered effect. The instrumentation and harmonica evoke lush melody full of hypnotic, classic clarity. The music is clean, stark and the candor of it intensifies the isolation of sound.
By My Side opens with “Leaving you,” a simple ballad devoid of overproduction, cooing “and this is you without me by your side/this is the future black but open wide.” The most endearing, beloved track of the album, “Phantom song,” relies on chilling harmonics and beautiful guitar interplay. Intriguing lyrics serenade “somebody smoked my paper wings, so I must fall.” “Your Sweetest Smile” consists of a dreamy ballad that has an ocean-like hypnotic effect. “Holes” vocalizes of trust and betrayal, “I wish your tongue would feel like pain/and cut my tongue in two/ I would not have to speak no more, I’d leave it up to you.” Their cover of Joy Division's “Love Will Tear Us Apart” is an entrancing version, though stripped of the energy that many Joy Division fans loved about the song - this rendition is different in virtually all aspects.
The album has a defining element of simple clarity. Each track has an appeal of natural beauty, a hauntingly, lonely, cryptic beauty. Ghostly, mysterious tracks of love, longing, and isolation are apart of the appeal of the alienated sound. By my side is a peaceful, endearing disc that I will treasure for ages. I give thanks to Son of the Velvet Rat; they have left a ghost note on my enchanted soul.
