The fifth Bathers’ album is simply as great, moving and inspired as their previous works. It sees no major changes in Chris Thomson’s sublime songwriting, nor in the band’s sound. There is less emphasis on the orchestral side this time, though, the “symphonic” settings of Sunpowder having made room for even more refined strings backdrops (“Lost Certainties” and “The Fragrance Remains Insane”, beautiful codas to the awe-inspiring “The Night Is Young”) and new shades of sound, such as Carlo Scattini’s accordion on “Hellespont In A Storm” and Colin McIlroy’s guitar. As for Thomson, his rough Waits-like growl has definitively matured into a richer, rounder tone, in places strangely reminiscent of the younger purr of his early records. But seventeen is a long time ago, as we are told in the wistful “East of East Delier”, and now his usual unashamedly romantic pleas take on a new urgency, an almost tragic tinge. In fact, the overall mood of this album lies in a kind of stoical acceptance and hard-earned serenity (“Just you remind her/that I’m still here/up on the west coast waiting/I wear the rain like tears”; “Sometimes alone/is just how we have to be”) constantly troubled by the bittersweet pangs of memory and desire. A few rays of hope can be found here, too – as in the typical “Once Upon a Time On The Rapenburg”, a song to perpetuate a moment of bliss, or in the elegant “Girlfriend”, a real jazz-pop classic blessed by the lightest wah-wah ever heard, where an ever-confident Thomson, simply by stating that Saskia is his girlfriend (a magic word), seems to imply that their love will vanquish time and space, “the devilish sea” that separates them. The real coup de maître, however, comes at the end of the record. After Thomson has sung the very last verse (“I’ll love you until the twelth of never/and baby you know that’s a long long time”), the music lingers for a while. A message left on the answering machine is heard over snatches of the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony played backwards. The effect is arrestingly tender. Time stands still for a while – it would seem that that music and those words of love could go on forever. And when it finally stops – the feeling is so intense I have no words for it.