cover of The Tourniquet

“Robyn, you got a package!”

“Uhh…” The package could only be one thing: MAGNET! CD, that is. Not Magnet.

[Before I forget, happy birthday, Even! He’s 35 today. I forgot his birthday last year so I think I was ultra-determined to remember it this year. Problem is that I can’t figure out the best way to express the birthday greetings…good thing I’m not a “writer”.]

So, the package was, indeed, of CD-size and weight and of origin from another country. My first thought was that the cover art didn’t feel “right”, but I must have gotten used to it because I don’t mind it anymore. The artwork is similar to that of “On Your Side”, with organic/nature related doodle-ish drawings, faces, animals, yellows, browns, gold, black–Martin does a fine job, as usual. 😉 (And his design for The Last Day of Summer is on display at The European Design Show: awesome.) I had good reason to check the liner notes. (cough)

I’ve listened to the album about 5+ times by now (it’s 40 minutes long/short) and…well, it has grown on me in those listens. I already liked it (telepathically), but I was a bit torn because for a few of the songs, I found that I only liked half of the song. I’d like the beginning but not the end, or vice versa. Strange? As I get more used to the songs, I’ll probably like the songs in their entirety, but some of these songs just have a lot (for lack of a better description) going on in them. I know that craplods of songs are like that, but in this case it threw me off a bit.

As I’ve been told before, this album is much happier sounding than his previous albums. No freakishly happy songs here, but noticeably not as unhappy as before. 🙂

If you look at the categories, you can see that I wasn’t sure what to label this. “The Pacemaker” starts off with sounds reminiscent of kid’s toy instruments interspersed with random blips and clicks. It’d be an interesting song without vocals (although one of the best things about Magnet is the vocals). “Hold On” has that clicky start as well, and then in come the orchestral string flourishes, banjo picking, theremin-esque whizzes…you’ll have no idea what I’m talking about unless you listen to the song.

Hm. Well. You’ll have to wait a bit as the album isn’t coming out in the US until autumn (what a shame!). And now that I can see that the sun has risen, I’m off to bed.