I was very reluctant to buy this album. Not because I didn't think it would be good, but because its predecessor, SO TONIGHT THAT I MIGHT SEE, ranks as one of my greatest, stomp-down, if-I-was-stuck-on-a-deserted-island-with-only-one-album-and-a-CD-player, all-time favorites. I bought the album shortly after it was released and savored it like expensive absinthe for more than ten years before I nerved myself up for another glass o' Hope Sandoval & Company. You see, while I was sure the album would be "good", relatively speaking, I was equally sure that I would be disappointed in it - what the hell kind of follow-up album could possibly escape the shadow of such a dark masterwork as SO TONIGHT THAT I MIGHT SEE? What could match hauntingly beautiful, achingly sad, subtly brilliant songs like "Fade Into You", "Blue Light, Red Light" and "Sweet Mary Silence"? Absolutely nothing, surely.

I needn't have worried.

From the opening strains of "Disappear", Mazzy immediately re-establishes the dark, red-lit, drunk-on-wine-and-feeling-profoundly-sad atmosphere of the previous album. If anything, Hope seems to have washed down an extra-large fistfull of librium with her Burgundy when writing AMONG MY SWAN. This is one seriously mellow album, but - always a sign of total genius - it never crosses the line into bathos. And just like TONIGHT, it does what only great albums can do: its individual tracks, good as they might be ("Cry, Cry", "Still Cold", "All Your Sisters" and "Look On Down From the Bridge" are in particular absolutely smashing songs), weave together so neatly that the listener often can't tell (and doesn't care) where one ends and the other begins. Rather, they form a kind of tapestry, an atmosphere, a unifying mood, which pervades not for one song but for the entire album. It's for this reason that I never listen to individual songs on TONIGHT or SWAN, but rather the entire albums from start to finish. To do anything less is like prying a single emerald out of a jewel-encrusted crown. You can do it, but why bother?

By the bye, an album like AMONG MY SWAN should be listened to in the following manner:

1. Turn off cell phone. With hammer if necessary.
2. Extinguish all electric lights.
3. Triple-lock door.
4. Draw hot bath.
5. Light candles and leave around tub.
6. Light cigar.
7. Pour one large glass absinthe. Dissolve sugar.
8. Strip.
9. Sink into tub up to chin.
10. Press "Play."

Brand	N/A
Rating	4.7 (780 ratings)
Price	$12.03
Category	Adult Alternative

Among My Swan

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