Think Like A Key 2024
Night Moods
Nocturnal reveries from Los Angelena who’s on to turn daily-routine blues into purple hearts.
“I Might Be Dead”: this line from Hawk Percival’s song from a few years ago may serve as a key to her first full-length offering which originally emerged in two download-only volumes to eventually get combined for a more rounded experience. And experience is what the dozen pieces of “Night Moods” essentially are – and the magic of number twelve should not be lost on the listener – in their shaping of mesmeric psychedelia that will rearrange the audience’s brainwaves into spiritual forms. And even though fantasms and phantoms born out of the chanteuse’s imaginary journeys into hypnagogic state tend to feel quite wistful, they’re also life-affirming, befitting the album whose melodies target our depression-scarred existence.
However, while it’s “I’m Not Alone” which gives this message an explicit verbiage to bring the record to a close, one must tune into the triumphant “Nel Tuo Letto” to access the platter’s phonetic delights, Percival’s grasp of Italian sensuality adding exquisite eroticism to what can seem too overwhelming at first – but not before the title track sees Hawk introducing, with immediate momentum an ever-shifting instrumental panorama as a support for her lilting tones and soul-gripping lyrics. Sometimes aloof, as “The Wintertime” and ” At The Gates” suggest by drenching otherwise danceable grooves in cold swirl of synthesizers, she’s projecting pseudo-Hawaiian bliss in the likes of “Like The Night” and “The Mountain” – the former a prog rock trip, the latter an insistent ballad that, with “Manor In The Mountains” appearing further on, consciously channels another artiste’s “Wuthering Heights” – yet worry is never far away from the singer’s mind. So if the faux-meek “Eye Lips” wraps her anxiety in an arresting motif, the organ-bolstered “The Lion” flows in a bold, even jubilant, way, and “Space And Time” packs pop agenda into equally solemn soundscape.
A bit more variety in tempos might elevate this album to celestial realm, but it’s all right, as “High In The Morning” says, and as far as debuts go, “Night Moods” is a tremendously alluring siren call.
****1/2
