(2023) Mick Harvey & Amanda Acevedo - Phantasmagoria in Blue
Review:
Many vocalists spend their lives looking for the ideal duet partner, and you can never tell where you might find one. It's possible this notion was going through the mind of Mick Harvey, the producer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist best known for his work with Nick Cave and PJ Harvey, when he was asked by artist and filmmaker Amanda Acevedo if he was willing to collaborate on a musical project. Harvey met Acevedo while touring Mexico with Harvey, and when she sent him some private recordings she'd made, he felt the project had potential even though she'd never made an album before. 2023's Phantasmagoria in Blue is the fruit of Harvey and Acevedo exchanging audio files and later entering a Los Angeles studio together, and for a beginner, Acevedo acquits herself quite well. Harvey is an acknowledged fan of French singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg (he's recorded several albums of his songs), and in many respects this sounds like Harvey's variation on the recordings Gainsbourg made with Jane Birkin and Brigitte Bardot; his voice is less grainy and nicotine-ravaged than Gainsbourg's, but the casual melodrama of his phrasing and his interplay with the sensual, breathy murmur of Acevedo's instrument is evocative and effective, and a superb complement for the elegance of Harvey's string-laden arrangements. (There's also a hint of the artful eccentricity of Lee Hazlewood's sides with Nancy Sinatra, fitting since this includes interpretations of two songs they cut together, "Indian Summer" and "She Won't.") The majority of the tracks on Phantasmagoria in Blue were originally recorded by other artists, though there are a pair of pieces Harvey and Acevedo penned for this album, and if this LP doesn't offer much of a clue in what future they may have as composers, as a vocal team, they evoke a sometimes theatrical but well-modulated air of longing, ache, and pageantry that's striking and memorable, like a collection of great romantic ballads for people who wear a lot of black and aren't hung up on happy endings. Harvey's faith in Acevedo's gifts was well founded, and on Phantasmagoria in Blue she's as good a foil for his vocal style as anyone could hope. — allmusic
Track List:
01 - Creators of Rain
02 - Indian Summer
03 - I Lost Something in the Hills
04 - Song to the Siren
05 - Milk & Honey
06 - Love Is a Battlefield
07 - Al Alba
08 - The Decadence of Lust
09 - Phantasmagoria in 2
10 - The Blue Unicorn
11 - She Won't
12 - Trapeze
13 - The One & Only (Phantasmagory)
14 - You Got Me Singing
Media Report:
Genre: chamber pop, indie-folk
Country: Australia / Mexico
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)
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