Mazzy Star
So Tonight That I Might See
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Mazzy Star's spacey fusion of old blues, creepy psychedelia and down-and-out country & western could've proved as unpleasant as the combined effects of cheap whiskey, magic-mushroom tea and black coffee. But the West Coast duo neutralized the weird mix into cool, laid-back ballads for their highly acclaimed 1990 debut, She Hangs Brightly. Mazzy's follow-up, So Tonight That I Might See, spaces off into even hazier dreamscapes that are so relaxed it makes the Cowboy Junkies seem wired.
Hope Sandoval's vocals echo and waver throughout Tonight as if they were bouncing off the walls of an old, abandoned mansion. Her voice, which rarely peaks or dips, flows in long,
Read More languid sighs over reeling background effects by partner and producer David Roback. In "She's My Baby," he spins a web of sheer, trippy feedback under simple acoustic guitar while dragging Mazzy's already slow pace to a crawl. The anesthetized sounds wind out beneath a blanket of foggy production. While this is all intriguing at first, Tonight grows increasingly monotonous. The muffled "Mary of Silence" nods off into opiated drifts of organ, while in "Five String Serenade," Sandoval's fuzzed-out voice drones to whispery guitar and trancey violin. The songs are pretty but too hollow to allow for real feeling. Slowpoke country guitar wilts, slides and moans over the sparse tambourine shakes of "Fade Into You" yet never comes to life. Even the dusty and resonant sounds of pipe organ in "Blue Light" and the bluesy saunter of "Wasted" dissipate before reaching the gut or the soul. It's strange. Even though So Tonight That I Might See incorporates many of the same warm elements that made Billie Holiday bloom and Gram Parsons bleed, it still winds up feeling as dull and disconnected as a lone junkie at a crowded party. (RS 671) LORRAINE ALI |
