A brave new world of goodness
Even the title of this album is brilliant. Abrahams's title cheekily toys with the debunked medical practice of “the rest cure" in the same way that his music toys with pretty much every established genre on the planet. From the moment Kari Kleiv starts her sci-fi poetry recitation of "just dressed, I'll pluck the bullets from your chest, let it grow and heal, only after you forgive the dream for never being real" while weird sonic ambience unrolls itself in album opener ‘Fragile Mind’ until the delicate and almost folk-rocky softness of album closer ‘Epilogue’, you know that this collection is very special.
I can't say what it is that charms me so much about this work. It is masterfully done in terms of its music, production and rather ample sampling. Leo Abrahams seems all too able to guide us aurally from trip-blues to shambling ambience to post-folk poetry or even really weird soft-rock in ‘No Frame’. And the music world seems to know it and appreciate it, because the list of contributors to this record is impressive: Brian Eno, Bingo Gazingo, KT Tunstall, Phoebe Legere, Foy Vance and Ed Harcourt to name a few.
I'm trying to find a way of explaining this album succinctly. It feels like trip-hop made by a folk musician, or folk music made by a trip-hoppist, or a long poetry reading taking place on another planet and orchestrated by sound engineers instead of ... poetry festival people. Trust me, this makes sense if you listen to ‘The Unrest Cure’, and you should listen to this album because it is a rather brave new world of goodness. In the words of Phoebe Legere in the track entitled ‘Ultra-Romantic Parallel Universe’: "I'm riding my bike through the English countryside, it's June and I smile up into the high blue sky, I'm riding through a velvet universe and I'm thinking big thoughts about astrophysics and sex ... and you." Or, somehow even more brilliant: "I'm wearing a silk shamoo, and I'm wet for you ... in an English xanadu". Pure, hilariously wonderful and camp brilliance. Thank you, Leo Abrahams. Your album made me relax and smile in all the right ways. And thank you Bingo Gazingo for having a cool name.