A cold and windy day. One can smell the snow in the air. You wear a warm coat and a big scarf. Earphones in your ears. You walk at a fast pace. The wind burns on your face. Back home you hide away and curl up in a fluffy blanket, but at the same time want to break free. From the world. From yourself. From what's keeping you from anything.
Nona Mez. No names. Songs about anonymous people with anonymous lives. Songs about you and me. Songs about Geert Maris, the man behind Nona Mez. Probably one of the best kept secrets in Belgium.
It's been five years since his previous album, and that might have been exactly the time this singer-songwriter needed. The music is pure. Not too many nor too little arrangements, instruments or melodies. The lyrics are honest. Not too pompous nor too simple.
Five years is a long time. Enough time to make two CD's even. Radio Rain - and - Hard Luck Stories. One with all new songs in beautiful arrangements, and one with old and new songs, stripped down to voice and guitar. It is hard to decide which versions one likes best. It might take some time to get used to the new version of songs from his previous CD's you've listened to over and over again. Listening to the new song 'Mercy' physically hurts, but has a somewhat light-headed feel to it in the fully instrumented version. The acoustic version on the other hand really cuts through marrow and bone.
The more famous and poppy songs of Radio Rain such as 'Counting' and 'Hard Luck Stories', a duet with Milow, are certainly not the best songs on this album. It is songs like 'Words by Numbers', 'Doorstep' and 'Spades' that make this record a little masterpiece. They are at the same time full of hope and desperation.
Euphoria and melancholia united in only a few words and notes. Anonymous and personal. That is what we love about Nona Mez.
All songs can be listened to at the Homerun record label's YouTube Channel
Picture taken from www.milow.be
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