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Mark & the Clouds — Machines Can't Hear You
(Gare du Nord GDNCD077/GDNLP077, 2024, CD / DL)

by Henry Schneider, Published 2024-08-01

Machines Can't Hear You Cover art

Machines Can’t Hear You is the fourth Mark & The Clouds album, an amalgamation of 60s pop, folk, and psychedelia. Augmenting the regular lineup of Marco Magnani (vocals, guitars, harmonica, keyboards, and bouzouki), John O’Sullivan (bass, backing vocals, and pedal steel guitar), and Shin Okajima (drums, cajon, and percussion) are several guests from previous albums: Tom Hammond (trumpet), Joseph Hammond (trombone), Rachel Kashi (keyboards), Tiberio Ventura (drums), Javier Ayensa (acoustic guitar), and Lucie Rejchrotova (keyboards). Machines Can’t Hear You is also the first album with songs co-written by Magnani and O’Sullivan, “What Happened to the Future?” and “South 42 Westerly.” Both are catchy, upbeat pop-psych songs with a bit of The Hollies vibe. The other fifteen songs are penned by Magnani. The songs that stand out for me include “Underground,” a gentle introspective and soothing acoustic song, “The World Is Falling” with its urban street sounds and psych-punk attitude, the haunting and trippy “The Cry of the Wind,” the raw energy of “Swearing at the Moon,” and the eleven minutes of meditative, trippy, and psych jamming of “The Age of Clowns.” The brass accompaniment on “Soul of Nature,” “Swearing at the Moon,” and “Robotic Man” adds a wonderful element to the music that preserves the band’s classic rock influences, moving from acoustic folk to electronic psychedelic rock.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Mark and the Clouds

More info
http://markandtheclouds.bandcamp.com/album/machines-cant-hear-you

 

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