Levia carmina

I came across Evora, an Irish band, through the intricacies of the web and the social networking (actually it began with Eoin Macken but from a start point, you never know where you will end) and I don’t regret it. Lately, I’m quite immersed in tango and classical music and here I have strayed from my standard route, which is a good thing.

So I downloaded the debut album of Evora, “Hurry up before I die” with its beautiful cover on Friday morning. It was a sad Friday as I had to be on my way to the funerals of a former work colleague that I liked very much. And the question was, what to listen on my ride there ? I needed something to soothe the day away and the sound of Evora matched my mood perfectly.

The day felt like spring and the sun was shining. We haven’t seen the sun much in the last weeks, with snow and ice at the beginning of that week in Paris. Driving with such weather and Evora’s album playing, I had this strange sensation to be in a kind of road movie and that I could drive on and on. But it was not to be one of those sad days. After that, the music helped me reminisce on all these good things past.

I can’t really pinpoint what feelings the music of this album awakens for me. I listen to this very soothing sound, atmosphere and it seems like someone is talking to me, I stop, look back and I feel that I’ve missed or forgotten something but I can’t say what. A fleeting sensation inside but not nostalgic, not the way it moves me in tango.

Another mystery for me is Alan Rickard’s voice. I usually can tell what I like in a singer’s voice : the quality, the grain… But here I love the voice but have no word to describe why. His voice blends beautifully with the instruments to create this mood that flows soothingly and where I lose myself. The music leads you through various landscapes from only voice, guitar, piano to a fuller sound with electric guitars. In one of the song, you can hear a mandolin with its peculiar tremolos (special note linked with a mandolin baroque concert I heard in Venice during this year carnival). I really love Close to you in its two versions (first and last tracks of the album) but my truly favorite song of the album is Tell me your name featuring Shannon. Nonetheless, each song has its own quirky little thing that makes it special to me : an instrumental introduction, voices, a rhythm or lyrics.

But believe it or not, I can actually link this album to my current obsession, tango. I was listening to Meet me by the water and with the last notes on the piano, a thought popped in my head :”oh ! here’s a 3-3-2″, pronounced tres-tres-dos in spanish, which is one of the pillar rhythm in tango music where the strong beats are shifted and reduced to 3 in a 4-beat bar. The 3-3-2 is actually used throughout two songs, Meet me by the water and Tomorrow.

One last thing, it’s been a while since I haven’t thought about Ireland but maybe…

Here is the video of Evora and Shannon in Tell me your name.