It's a good thing this review isn't a comedy sketch or a joke, because when it comes to timing, it's as far off as it could be: Whoever heard of reviewing a Piano Magic album in the first week of spring, when one would be least likely to listen to the band? The chilly, ghostly sounds of Piano Magic are so suited to crisp, thin air and falling leaves or snow that the group named their exquisite singles compilation Seasonlly Affective.

Ironically, then, 'Out of season, out of heart' is the first line on The Troubled Sleep of Piano Magic, the band's seventh album and first for Spanish label Green UFOs. Of course, frontman Glen Johnson is referring to a rapidly fading summer love, rather than his music, but you can hear his wink and nod.

Mar 24, 2004. It's a good thing this review isn't a comedy sketch or a joke, because when it comes to timing, it's as far off as it could be: Whoever heard of reviewing a Piano Magic album in the first week of spring, when one would be least likely to listen to the band? The chilly, ghostly sounds of Piano Magic are so suited.

In another sense, however, this album follows the typical springtime arcs of renewal and re-emergence, coming after the most disappointing stretch of Piano Magic's career to date. Among the things that may have kept Piano Magic lying awake at night was a rather fruitless relationship with 4AD.

On paper, it made all the sense in the world: Gorgeous, baroque artist meets top purveyors of atmospheric, dreamy pop. However, the results-- Son de Mar, the score to a Bigas Luna film, and career nadir Writers Without Homes-- were mixed, at best. Fortunately, these low-key releases return to both the quality and mood of previous Piano Magic records without sounding like a retreat or a retread. Delicately weaving organic and electronic instruments with spectral, detached vocals from Johnson and others (most notably Klima's Angele David-Guillou), The Troubled Sleep is another collection of spellbinding ruminations on loss and unrequited love. Recorded with a six-piece band, the album is probably the most rock-oriented record Johnson has ever made, carrying tinges of the brooding guitar work of Nick Cave, Low, and The Dirty Three, and its fragility-- plucking acoustic guitars often meet gently throbbing rhythms amidst spacious, almost desolate soundscapes-- belies the emotional disquiet that runs through the best of Johnson's work.

The more rock-oriented approach doesn't always play to Johnson's strengths, but it might appeal to a wider audience than his (often far better) musicbox electronics. From the solitary, distant cry to 'Help Me Warm This Frozen Heart', to the almost Southern gothic desperation of 'Speed the Road, Rush the Lights', to the haunting (and unexpected) release of 'Luxembourg Gardens', Johnson escapes his tendency to tempt a listener's mind to wander over the course of a sometimes monolithic record.

Despite whispers that The Troubled Sleep would be the final Piano Magic record, the band recently returned to its more typically rewarding format-- the single-- with the 26-minute, six-song Saint Marie EP. Here, the title track is re-recorded with Low's Alan Sparhawk replacing Johnson on vocals with slightly disappointing results. Fortunately, Sparhawk's other guest performance, on the surprisingly menacing 'Wrong Turn', is much more rewarding. That track is also one of two that has Johnson reunited with folk star Vashti Bunyan, whom he coaxed out of a lengthy retirement to sing on Writers Without Homes. More a return to a traditional Piano Magic sonics than a full band setup, Saint Marie features a trio of instrumentals and additional guest work by Cornershop's Ben Ayres (on tamboura) and Swedish harpist Linnea Malmberg. At turns elegiac and fierce, the EP is a reminder that short sketches play to one of Johnson's greatest strengths: excavating and expressing sentiment and emotion. Clap Your Hands Poem Mp3 Download there.

With these two release, there is, for the first time in a few years, a wealth of Piano Magic material worth mining.