The new album coming from the German band Place4Tears (formerly known as Blurred Lipstick) is not exactly a new one, as Tyvers Oben â?“ the singer and composer which could be considered the mayor of this imaginative place collecting tears like an artificial lake could make with raindrops and turning them into whispering dark oblique music... - previously issued it as a self-made album three years ago. Afterwards, they gained an agreement with Echozone and they decided to re-issue it with just a little difference, the absence of the only German-speaking track, Tödliche freiheit, and presumably an improved master. From a strictly stylistic viewpoint, itâ??s clear they try to avoid any cliché, even if they seems intimately related to the most ethereal and dark-tinged side of 80s wave music (we could mention notorious names such as those of Cocteau Twins â?“ above all the first darkest ones â?“ and the entrancing effected guitars of the main craftsman of their sound, the highly inventive and emotional Robin Guthrie, as well as the very first steps of Dead Can Dance and any conglomeration between these two bands... you could imagine a sort of transposition of Faith & The Muse into something which could alternatively be turned into Faith & The Speller or Faith & The Satyr!) and â?“yes!- it seems there are some slices of figurative theatre encrypted in some tracks such as the distorted beauty and the deep sadness of princess Valium, where the plucky guitars seems to say good bye to a depressed girl, treated with tranquilizers and anti-depressive pills (a Lynch-ian mood seems to pervade the musical space after a female voice ensigns last salutations: "you went away/you left this life/you chose the pills/out of pain... .you went away/from darken sky/I will miss you/and say good bye") as well as some narrative links to an imaginary journey into seaâ??s depths as well as some "natural" and symbolic descriptions perfectly fitted to the anguished and melancholic mood soaking the whole album â?“ in particular tracks such as the hypnotic Septembers breath , the nostalgic Keep Me Back and the leading astray Lovesick). Drum rhythms will gradually hypnotize you as well as the entrancing female voices by Sabine and Julia through a wooden (but intimately desolate) place where dreamy states and obscure moods intertwines and all these elements substantially clearify whatâ??s standing under the wordy way someone used to describe their style, i.e.Cold Heavenly Goth...

By the way, you could definitively argue Place4Tearsâ?? sound could be even more entrancing and psychedelic after youâ??ll listen to the "remixes" proposed at the end of this record: the gentle touch added by Sean Bowley, the singer of the cult-band Eden, in the catching interpretation of Tears Of Avalon as well the suffocating slow-mo sad core in the re-interpretation of Septembers Breath by Ashley Dayour â?“ the singer of Whispers in The Shadow â?“ could be considered as possible paths this interesting goth-wave band should walk to innovate their style. They introduce their music saying itsâ?? based on (and recorded for) life, love, fear, death and loneliness (... existential themes whose gothic followersâ?? minds are crowded with... )... The listener could sentence about this magniloquent declaration of intent indeed!