Artist: Magic Numbers, The
Label: EMI Records
Release: 2005
The Magic Numbers kicked up quite a storm with the release of their debut, and once the dust settled one thing was obvious: the top of the charts were almost unanimously telling the world this is the next best thing! And the expectations of what would follow this phenomenon began.
So what does the self-titled album The Magic Numbers have to offer? For starters, the fact that brother and sister Romeo and Michele (Stodart), and likewise brother and sister Sean and Angela (Gannon), really do form a kind of combination of magic numbers, serving up plenty of aural pleasure. Especially for those who like to give themselves over to warm, long, almost meditative sounds, full of optimism and childlike exuberance. The song This Love builds up hypnotically, growing from a small, quiet tune into a proper elegy. Much of the credit goes to the album’s only guest musician, violinist Angharad Davies, who grabs the reins of the melody with her playing and takes it off into expanses that would otherwise seem pretty much out of reach. Later, in Try, they step into a similarly dreamy setting with the help of another completely acoustic instrument, the melodica. And it’s exactly this feeling of dreaminess, or maybe better, this feeling of pleasant remoteness, that they always pull off best and that sounds the most genuine. Homey.
The music is polished and stretched throughout between springtime softness and a conditional sharpness of inner unrest, which only rarely surfaces, more as a warning of what could happen. What makes this symbiotic still life a bit low on contrast is perhaps mostly the occasional, somewhat drawn-out arrangement, which hints that they’d like to cram too much in all at once. They could also have gained a certain degree of appeal by pushing the vocals of Michele and Angela further to the front.
Those two hide away more in the backing harmonies, but they could, at least in places, easily make up for Romeo’s somewhat monotonous singing. And plenty could be done about the lyrics too, which more often than not sound like they were written back in high school, before they’d gotten to know the greatest literary heavyweights, their writing and their use of ideas and imagination. Well, there’d be nothing wrong with that as such, but it doesn’t always line up with the seriousness and maturity they’re generally leaning towards.
Even though they sound pretty far from other bands of today, the combination of numbers still isn’t good enough to be magic. Not so much The Next Best Thing, more The New Kids In Town.
Lineup
Romeo Stodart – guitar, banjo, piano and vocals
Angela Gannon – melodica, percussion and vocals
Michele Stodart – bass guitar, keyboards, percussion and vocals
Sean Gannon – drums
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Angharad Davies – Violin (#9)
Production
Craig Silvey & Romeo Stodart
Tracklist
01. Mornings Eleven
02. Forever Lost
03. The Mule
04. Long Legs
05. Love Me Like You
06. Which Way To Happy
07. I See You, You See Me
08. Don’t Give Up The Fight
09. This Love
10. Wheels On Fire
11. Love’s A Game
12. Try
13. Hymn For Her
Running time: 64:37
