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Charm of Finches – Marlinchen in the Snow (2024)
Review:
Those familiar with the Brothers Grimm tales will recognise Charm Of Finches’ fourth studio album title, Marlinchen In The Snow, as a reference to the character in The Juniper Tree who buries the bones of her dead brother, decapitated by her stepmother, beneath the same tree where her mother lies and he transforms into a bird singing the truth about his death. For Australian sibling duo Mabel and Ivy Windred-Wornes, it, and the glissando fingerpicked song itself, is about female strength, battling oppressive obstacles and following your inner voice. These are recurrent themes on the album, with its bewitching airy folk-pop harmonies, brushes of harp and brass and songs that claw light out of the darkness, opening with the punchy rhythms and chiming guitars of Clean Cut, which, Indyana Kippin on viola and violin and inspired by a breakup, is about walking away from a dysfunctional relationship (“I left that city on the morning flight/And right then you decided I wasn’t in your life/Any longer”) before its abrupt drum beat end. Anchored by piano, the dreamy Atlantis swirls through metaphorical images of urban anxiety and depression (“Shimmering walls and scaly skin/The cold has a way of creeping in/Voiceless mouths, unseeing eyes/No one hears your cries in the city of disguise”) but “Even in these watery fells/There’s a beauty where the darkness dwells”. Though opening with piano notes, On My Own unfolds into synth hisses and beats and again turns to mental turmoil (“I wish I had a great sword made of steel/To combat all the demons in the night/But all the weapons in the armoury/Couldn’t win this awful fight/Against this worrying, rampant mind of mine”), the resolution being to rely on yourself (“this valiant heart/Beating on its own trajectory”) and make your own way through rather than rely on some wise owl because “not the wisest sage on earth nor the worldliest of birds/Could ensure that my tongue ran the right course”. The shimmering, strings caressed Leave It All Behind is a love song to their hometown of Melbourne (“I love the smell of the air out here/I love the way the stars twinkle/I love this little mudbrick house your mother made for you/You lived in as a child”) despite having “chosen a wanderer’s life” with the tug of warm familiarity and the longing “for something more”. Joined by Sam Bentley from The Paper Kites on vocals, If You Know Me, another dreamy wash, turns on a theme of getting to understand someone’s inner self to make a relationship work, shifting from “No one will ever know all the secrets that hide behind my frown …and my face it seems to say to anyone that comes my way/‘Get the hell away from me or I’ll pin you down’” and “I know I can be a downer, a pessimistic, killjoy, frowner” to “if you know me/You know that I like to talk/That I like to read your thoughts/And I’ll hold you if that’s what you want from me tonight… You know that I like to joke/So before this goes up in smoke/Why don’t you get to know me”.
****
The complexity of relationships remain the focus for the keyboards wooziness Temporary Home (“I warm my hands on a morning coffee and you’re ten drinks down/Take out the pieces you don’t want me to see/Try to hide from me the way you feel but I know it all anyway”), another song that, with a 3 a.m. Amsterdam backdrop, speaks of a restless, wandering soul (“It’s just a long series of goodbyes/There’s no wonder I made this my life/As a child I ran away in the night/Try to find myself a temporary home in this motion… Home it is my suitcase, dreaming in a different bed each night”). There’s a sensual sway to Middle Of Your Mess, a song they described as “a tongue-in-cheek bop” that fairly frankly addresses ‘girl talk’ (“‘You look happy’ means I wish you were sad/‘Oh hey it’s nice to see you’ means get out of my house”) especially when jealousy rears its head (“I can’t help but feel a little out of place/She wants you, I want her out of my face… I’ll wait till she’s found something better to do/Than hurt the lonely bodies who get caught up with you”). That emotional treachery spreads too through the icy, brittle Human with its oscillating keyboard pulses (“You held me there with your gaze and I couldn’t escape your mouth/The power just from your words/The cold gripped my back/And now I see through you but it’s too late for that”) and dark rumination on the gender differences in psychological make up (“These boys don’t get what they don’t know/These boys don’t feel what we can’t show/They don’t get that chill on the way home/The darkness, it scares me for what will unfold”). Musically more full-bodied with its brushed drums and slow waltzing carousel feel, Bend & Break remains, however, in the dark metaphysical shadows of emotional fallout (“Have I been a walking whirlwind?/Have I left my body behind?/For all I know, I am back there, smashed up/All shattered like glass inside”) as they again the contemplate relationship disparities (“Sometimes I think I feel too much/Or maybe you just do not feel enough/And all that I give you, you take”), returning once more to the image of a “travelling minstrel” and of being “a mere visitor here”. While the final track may be titled In The Dark, reflecting a tone that permeates the album, it a song about finding the spark within (“Little gift, amethyst/Steel to stone, see it glow/Did you know that it flows/From deep beneath the surface”), learning how “to go as slow as the grasses grow here” and finding calm in mind and spirit through contemplation (“Sister silence, won’t you lend me your patience/Swallow up the quarry of my rampant mind/And cool cavern teach me how to love the darkness/Show me the secrets that lie beyond my sight”), coming to see and accept “my frailties and my fears” but then taking them out dancing into life. An album of interwoven layers, both musically and thematically, fragile but with a quiet strength, it soothes and disturbs in equal measure, whimsical but wise, like the bird in the fairy tale, it rises to sing the truth. — klofmag.com
Track List:
01 - Clean Cut
02 - Atlantis
03 - On My Own
04 - Leave It All Behind
05 - If You Know Me
06 - Temporary Home
07 - Middle of Your Mess
08 - Human
09 - Bend and Break
10 - Marlinchen in the Snow
11 - In the Dark
Media Report:
Genre: chamber pop, indie-folk
Origin: Melbourne, Australia
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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