Gare du Nord
Kind of Cool
Moving Coil Music/Pias Recordings

'Hi, do you know what it's like... Spending a decade in one year? New places, new spaces / And lots of new faces... It's all here in these new songs / Please enjoy... and remember / Don't get lost in a dark chill / And never, never sell your soul to the devil / Love. This is the note on the back of the booklet from the Brussels guys François and Dinant, written in July 2002. You can get a hint of what is waiting for you to listen to from that.

This is an edition that comes with a bonus cd featuring a must-check-out version of Mercury's "Love of my life", immortal Robert Johnson's riffs, and two video clips also. In total, it's more than 80 minutes of travelling by senses. And you can get the different moods by knowing from where some of the tracks were inspired by and even created for, as for instance: Paris ("Chinese Whispers", "Japanese strings" / "You're so tight"); Perugia ("Profondo Blu"); Katmandu ("Panchira"); Berlin ("I'm not a woman, I'm not a man"); Cancun ("Yo...Que pasa?"); Willemstad ("Kingston Paradise"); London ("Party Heartbreak").

The artwork receives like the previous release a careful treatment and in this one the colours and lights also evoke all those places they've been around. The cover is so sensual that by showing only a healthy pair of legs from those imaginary countryside summer ladies somewhere in the past invites you provocatively to discover all the beauty that is inside.

Deserves a mention the evil side that is in all of us too. And here represented by excerpts of George W. Bush demagogies and media's maniqueismes after the events of the destruction of the WTC. "Everybody is lost in the dark chill" sings the heavy tune. But probably if just one track has to appear more than the others, Sold my soul is a strong choice. As another note states 'was written in the three minutes following the Margo Timmins interpretation of the Robert Johnson song "Me and the Devil" on the Cowboy Junkies album'. I guess we all have to take the advice on not selling ourselves more seriously and in doing so, avoiding the actual state of the world. Shall we think in something else better? Let's start with this work that totally express its title.

Copyright © 2002 Laudo