Project Blackbird are no strangers to the digital pages of Joyzine as I have reviewed their album If This Is The End and a range of singles including ‘Shake These Trees’ featuring The Specials’ Lynval Golding as guest vocalist, and ‘Laissons cela entre nous’ with its mighty ground shaking horn arrangement. They are exceptional musicians who, like the best pop-magpies, weave their influences – pop, reggae, and jazz – into their own unique sound.
The band have just released ‘Thank You For Last Time’, a tantalising glimpse of their forthcoming album True Names. It’s a pop track held in suspension between the dub vibes of the 2-4 piano stabs and the blasts of reggae horns with the spy-themed twang of the guitar. The rhythm sections holds the line with bass bounce and rock-solid drums and Ming Nagel’s voice swings between her vulpine singing, coffee and cream spoken word and some well-placed whispers. All the better to intone lyrics that come from the heart of a poet (lyrics printed below).
Ming says of the track, “It was just two words in my head: time, fiction. That was the jumping off point. I went back to Iceland a few years ago (after first going there in the ’90s) and culled some of the lines in the verses and the spoken word part from a poem I wrote during that second visit. There’s a phrase in Icelandic that basically translates to “thank you for last time.” It’s what Icelanders say when they bump into old friends.
On the surface, the song is a love letter to Iceland; it’s an incredibly mysterious and inspiring place. On a deeper level, it’s about the elasticity of time and the process of grappling with getting older and meeting your past selves.’ As the song unfolds like a slightly funkified casual Sunday drive, a dreamscape travelogue emerges, adding an air of mystery that hints at multiple layers of meaning beneath the surface. It’s otherworldly and earthbound all at once.“
Project Blackbird are ALAN ROBERTS – guitars / EDDIE DUBLIN – drums / JAMIE VARLEY – bass guitar / JON READ – keyboards, trumpet / MING NAGEL – vocals.
The album date is yet to be announced but follow Project Blackbird to find out more information.
Project Blackbird socials: Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram | X (Twitter) | YouTube
Lyrics:
to everything that I adore
in this isolated world:
fates and furies, nights unfurled
time – fiction – time – fiction
mounds of graymoss in the fields
reptiles swelling to reveal
cracks of their tectonic scales
time – fiction – time – fiction
outer space must pale in comparison to this
other-worldly landscape of darkening bliss
I head to sands that are still belted by a sash of volcanic boulders
it’s strange to be back again – 20 years on and feeling much older
like looking in a mirror through a hazy lens, backwards over your shoulder
later we search for the cottage, on the coastline where I stayed
waters rich in alkaline
write a somnolent slow sweep
dreams tilt on the edge of sleep
time – fiction – time – fiction
each departure is a loss
each farewell is something gained
time stealing itself from time
time – fiction – time – fiction
outer space must pale in comparison to this
other-worldly landscape of darkening bliss
here it stands – Bakkasel*, my age
I know that both our stories have changed
I walk past expanses of green and unused foundations
everything is dying or in a state of gestation
the corrugated slopes bleed into the sky like an impressionist painting
* Bakkasel is is located in the seaside village of Stokkseyri, where singer Ming spent “a couple of weeks in monkish silence and contemplation in my early twenties“.
Review by Paul F Cook
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