Black Canvas - Musher

It took me a few days to finally figure out what band the Polish Black Canvas sometimes sound like. The first couple of tracks reminded me so much about something I used to listen to and love, but with 30 closing in and dementia is an option, I could not figure it out, until now.

Almost a decade ago, I got the debut album from German Final Selection, and I loved their 'Anti Hero' album. This reminds me so much about it with the dark toned synthpop, but where Final Selection managed to get one of my few top ratings, this is not going all the way. However, not bad either.

In this kind of slow going synthpop the voice is the key, because there is where the focus will be for the listener. For most parts, it works well, but here and there some additional work could have been necessary, on "Wonders of Flame" for an example. Music wise it's for the most not something you will hear on the dance floor. It's too slow for that. However, it manages to fit perfect for occasions like now, when I'm looking out on a storm clouded Gothenburg while the rain is pouring down. And I like the dark atmosphere created here and the emotional melodies sometimes are truly beautiful, like in the ballad "Red Eyes".

While I do think that the 13 tracks could had been cut down to 10 to maximize the overall quality, there's a lot of good, solid tracks here to be found, "Solitude", "Over The Night", "Lean Back", "Pyromaniac" and "No One".

I hope I will come back to this album from time to time, but I do fear that even though it's a solid set of tracks, it has not managed to make that kind of impact that I need to make it something I will remember every time I do a memory scan of what I want to listen to. I will however continue to follow these guys, because there's potential here to create something wonderful. If dark and atmospheric syntpop is something for you, this might be worth checking out. Dec 09 2011