Lake of Tears

Forever Autumn (Black Mark)
by Martin Popoff

Sad state of affairs here, Lake Of Tears doing no touring for A Crimson Cosmos, grinding through break-ups, poverty, and utter boredom, writing and rehearsing Forever Autumn furtively and obsessively. The result is magnificent but flawed, a direct progression from its predecessor into even mellower, folkier, balladic Floyd. It’s wonderfully sad easy listening music, with keyboards, piano and a still softly beating heart of crashy rock’n’roll drums and underground power chords. The flaw is that the lyrics are all too clear. On the positive, they are cool mysterious fantasy lyrics with lots of nature and fresh air. On the negative, the grammar and idiom are repeatedly and distractingly askew, drawing attention in ther clear, easily discernible delivery, a delivery which also wrinkles the nose due to Daniel’s accent. It’s ethnocentric to complain, but when the vocals reach out and plant a wet one on you like a David Gilmour acoustic ballad, you can’t ignore it. Still, the record as a whole is a unique folk doom fantasia mortality-confrontable dark forest nightride that is worth the nagging melancholy that, like a pre-dawn chill, takes quite some time to shake. Ultimately, Forever Autumn accomplishes through a whole separate set of stimuli, everything Ritchie Blackmore and Candice are trying and failing to conjure with their playtime minstrel costumes.
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