Reviews

Gabriel Moreno
Album: Nights In The Belly Of Bohemia
Label: Poetry Monday
Tracks: 10
Website: https://www.gabrielmoreno.co.uk

Released alongside a book of poems of the same name, this is the sixth album by Gibralter's former Cultural Ambassador and its answer to Leonard Cohen, an ode to the Bohemian experience celebrating art, dreams and resistance to the harsher realities and pressures of contemporary life. Flowing over an instrumentation stream of classical guitar, percussion, violin, and clarinet, it opens with the tinkly waltzing 'Edge Of A Dream', a love song of poetic seduction ("We can fold our thoughts and free a dove, we'll turn this room into old Montmatre/we can draw a boat and paint a sea/hold my wrinkling hands, our fears won't win…Perhaps we find a different plot to make our tales more meaningful/I like the structure of your wings, can I please dissolve into your skin?.. do you like the way the moon is lit/let's dance away til the night sees fit").

Fingerpicked with violin, 'Lightning Bolt' trades in metaphors for the giddy euphoria of being caught up by the madness of love ("Some people fall for fireflies, some people fall for rocks/I fell for the ebullience of a lightning bolt… I turn to love to fill my cup with shavings of the storm, and now the spiral winds won't stop"), and is quite possibly the only song to feature the word 'plenitude'. Yielding the album title, 'Bohemia' kicks in with stamping feet percussion, samba feel and violin, in which the narrator is struggling to find a their place in the maelstrom and a sense of security ("I am stuck in the belly of Bohemia, my friends they were gone a long time ago/I'd speak to my future but the telephone broke/I guess it all happened to leave space for my songs/I know that you need to go 'coz someone has to keep this boat afloat, can you please hold me some more?/Leave your bulwarks on the floor, 'coz my safety net is torn, and I am drowning in your moat").

Co-writer Ty Watling adding vocals, the calmer-paced 'Castles' is couched as a letter from father to son apologising that his life as an artist hasn't left an inheritance of material wealth ("Forgive me son, there is no stash under the stairs/I leave no plot for you to build an empire there…, I leave no watch with golden rims, the books I own won't teach you how to sail or swim… I have no house in Hampstead Heath, the songs I sang were only made to fuel my wings"), but rather he leaves him the wealth and tools of his creativity ("Take this pen, take this shield, to slay the beast of stagnation, I have no castles to defend, but take the engines of my imagination… typewriters, turntables bore truths that once kept me alive/these old machines may help you exorcize your mind, so you can leave your ghosts behind").

A slow waltzing swayer with plucked guitar strings, 'Vertigo' addresses anxiety, self-doubt and prevarication ("whenever you are near, my footsteps question the ground, and when you go, I can still smell the fear of a prince who can't deal with the crown…years will pass and I still won't have asked for a key to the church of your name as time fizzles away…Tomorrow when everyone is gone will you still think I gave it my best?").

A regret-heavy break-up song, 'Mortified Too' is Andalucian in mood, the fingerpicked pace picking up as the vocals come in as he pores over the relationship's collapse ("Are you mortified too, that this all went to hell?/Do you stay up at night, wondering what move you might have made?/Is it only me, dismembering the tale?/Are you telling our friends our play had to end for you to change?"), again drawing on imagery of writer's art ("our plot needs a gem and you blemish the page") to dissect the notes in "the nocturne of pain") and returning to metaphors of boats sinking ("I'll tell you again, you've broken my stern and the leakage is bad").

A scuffed percussive rhythm carries the similarly themed 'Half-Way House' (located in Peckham it appears) with its offbeat imagery and similes ("You were broken like a plastic spade which tried to penetrate the molten rock of family and friends/I was never meant for hackneyed tales, you said our century failed, yes but why did you just bicker all the way?") as well as taking an amusing swipe at gender nomenclature ("You said, 'please don't waste my time with names, you can call me 'they' and perhaps we might just end up at my place'/Is it politically correct to be turned on by the dirt?/I know you're past the hurt but please don't touch below my shirt").

Another broken relationship number as the wheels of fate come apart, there's equally wry and playful notes ("You bulldozed your cart all over my bazar …I know I was so sullen, we could have had our heaven/If only we were ready for the sun"), behind the classical fingerpicked guitar of 'When You Kill The Thing You Love' with its hints of Jacques Brel as it ponders the title's existential question about the aftermath of love, though, with a line abut aiming for the charts, it might also be about abandoning artistic integrity.

That's same question about hanging on to Bohemian idealism ("I need someone to scream, I need to rise up and wake me") in a world driven by capitalist ambitions rises in the simple picked guitar of 'Lovers, Dreamers' ("Seekers, sinners, did you give up our flow for a flat in the posh part of Rome?/They're selling cakes in Montmartre which cost more than the art/did you trade your Bedouin heart for a hit in the charts, did the muse completely depart?) as he spits out the line "This borough's a farce, they're all posers and tarts, your colour won't change the fact that it's built for the stars, the bankers having a laugh"). Given the Cohen comparisons , the refrain "Lovers, dreamers, come back to me, come back to me" has a certain echo, though the songs itself namechecks Willy De Ville.

It ends with the repeated pulsing guitar notes of 'Churn Out Gold', another song about a volatile relationship "(our spirits fought like Bouhdica and Rome") and the tug between artistic integrity and compromise ("Some want honey and others want the bees to churn out gold… Some want homes and others want the thrill"), but sounding a rallying cry in the opening "Bring me back my arrows and my bows/I left them in the bonnet of our love Renault" and ending with the epiphany of "All in all I am glad we went too far/Now I know there are holes inside the stars/It's been like that since the lizards crawled/Some hunt whales others seek the temperance of the shore". Long may Moreno chase his Moby Dick.

Mike Davies

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