Such a question is a good sign: it means that far from tired, Patrick Watson as always pleases, and far from being locked in an infinite repetition, his music is still evolving. Because the query is not about a group that would have produced albums that were a little weak to improve with each new release. Excellence is always at the rendezvous. Here, it is justified because the music surprises, innovates. Patrick Watson is not that of Patrick Watson.
That fans can rest assured, there are essentially like every time, what we love in musicians: always the extraordinary voice of the singer, so malleable that angelic voice that carries in the highest levels ( like the beautiful Good Morning Mr Wolf), melodies that delight and give chills, piano both cozy and reverberant.
But otherwise, it's over this time with the arrangements made of odds and ends, with that subtle balance between acoustic sounds, electric and electronic, with cabaret atmosphere, with violins, brass and other bizarre percussion .
Songs for robots, is it any wonder?, Is both more power and more synthetic. Acoustic guitars have not disappeared, but took no synthesizers, guitars are more incisive, more aggressive sound, the bass more prominent, and less direct melodies; the album is a little more rock (the excellent Know that you know), even a little soul (Bollywood, perhaps the best track on the album) and darker.
But again, that we are reassured, Patrick Watson did not become a rock band or banal pop music is always in a mid tempo that keeps his side hovering (except some flights), the arrangements are always strange, as in Turn into the noise, one of the most interesting titles on the disc, dark, heavy, with its ominous drone in the distance, or that Grace has everything a nice pop ballad, but with subtly diverted sounds .
A beautiful and discover new album, maybe the best, unless the future still holds surprises.
