Beautify Junkyards - The Beast Shouted Love

  by Adrian Janes

published: 9 / 11 / 2015

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Review

Beautify Junkyards are from Lisbon, and debuted in 2013 with an album of covers in the so-called British autumnal folk style. ‘The Beast Shouted Love’ is original material, still based in a subtly echoed, acoustic guitar-led sound, but with hints of psychedelia and more contemporary electronica. ‘Long Tomorrow’, for example, has a dreamlike, nostalgic atmosphere coupled with a keyboard whose timbre evokes ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’. Similarly, on tracks like ‘Sun Wheel Ceremony’ and ‘Drop City’, the flute sounds as if it is coming from a mellotron, at once suggesting that instrument’s late ‘60s/early ‘70s heyday, while the lovely vocal melody and harmonies of ‘Rainbow Garland’ have the freshness of some undiscovered West Coast hippie gem, even as its gently pulsating synth connects it with present-day electronic music. ’Lake’, with its overlapping male and female vocals, has an almost medieval English feel, at the same time as an interplay of guitar, percussion and keyboard lap around them. Although a sextet, the playing is simple and spare, the collective restraint such that the space between instruments is always respected in the overall sound. ‘Pes Na Areia Na Terra Do Sol’ (‘Feet in the Sand in the Land of the Sun’), for instance, features little more than Rita Vian’s gently longing vocal, acoustic guitar and the sound of surf, but there are also the slightest shadings of percussion and keyboard in the background that make the picture a little fuller. ‘Valley of Wonders’ is another understated yet moving performance - Vian’s voice, counterposed by the keyboard, itself has an air of almost childlike wonder. A more poignant mood comes through on ‘Tomorrow’s Children’, the melancholy lead vocal taken by João Branco Kyron, the synth and organ that accompany him striking a chilly note even as the lyrics seem to anticipate Spring beyond Winter. In ‘The Secret Life of the Love Song’, Nick Cave speaks of “what the Portuguese call ‘saudade’, which translates as an inexplicable longing, an unnamed and enigmatic yearning of the soul”. Although present, saudade is not the only feeling that Beautify Junkyards convey: joy, tenderness and awe are there too. Though their music can seem as simple as the surface of a lake, it has a lake’s depths also.

Track Listing:-

1 Sun Wheel Ceremony
2 Canterbury
3 Rainbow Garland
4 Pés Na Areia Na Terra Do Sol
5 Lake
6 Rite Of Passage
7 Tomorrow's Chidren
8 Drop City
9 Valley Of Wonders
10 Longo Amanhã

Band Links:-

https://www.facebook.com/beautifyjunky
http://beautifyjunkyards.bandcamp.com/

Label Links:-

https://megadodo.bandcamp.com/
http://www.mega-dodo.co.uk/