Review by Heather Phares
White Magic's debut album, and first recording as the duo of Mira Billotte and Doug Shaw, stretches beyond the haunting indie folk of the Through the Sun Door EP to an eclectic, sometimes scattered, array of sounds. Dat Rosa Mel Apibus -- Latin for "the rose gives the bees honey," a metaphor for hard work and its rewards that dates back to the 16th century -- is an apt title for this collection of songs; it feels like Billotte and Shaw dug deep to expand the band's boundaries. When the album's ambitious moments work, they're undeniably exciting: "Hold Your Hand in the Dark" pairs a winding, medieval-sounding melody with tumultuous drums; "Palm and Wine" is oddly jaunty and sexy, like Peggy Lee singing a whimsical cabaret-folk number; and "Sun Song" has a witchy sense of drama. The duo also delves into the more mystical meanings of the album's title and beautiful packaging, which depicts the Rosa Mundi, a traditional Rosicrucian image: on "All the World Wept," Billotte asks, "What is creation?" over a droning sitar melody that curls like incense smoke; on "Childhood Song," she's philosophical: "All we are is a blooming rose growing above the weeds below." The band's stylistic risks don't always pay off, though. "Hear My Call" and the title track are lengthy without developing much, and the lumbering rhythms the band favors can become tedious. White Magic is still the most compelling when the focus is on Billotte's unique alto, as on the band's riveting version of the traditional ballad "Katie Cruel" and "What I See," both of which recall the focus and simplicity of Through the Sun Door. Dat Rosa Mel Apibus is a frustratingly uneven album, but its strongest moments suggest that White Magic's ambition and hard work will reap rewards eventually.
White Magic
Dat Rosa Mel Apibus
[Drag City; 2006]
Rating: 7.7
If you've spent any time with Final Fantasy (the video game series, not the solo project), you know that the White Mage, while adorable, is a fairly ineffectual party member. She's great to have around when you've been brained by a GrImp or poisoned by a killer octopus. But when your party's healthy or she runs out of magic points, there isn't much for her to do besides whack huge dragons with a wooden stick. The Black Mage is more useful, bombing on monsters with hellacious attack spells, but sometimes-- like when your eyes are bleeding from a goblin punch-- you wish he had a little healing magic up his sleeve as well.
Enter the versatile Red Mage, who can learn a selection of White and Black spells. I'm telling you all of this at great personal cost (do you think I'm proud to know so much about Final Fantasy?) because Red Magic, according to the FF taxonomy, would be a more accurate name for this band's blend of the salutary and the malevolent than White Magic.
Dat Rosa Mel Apibus is a strange potion, more freak than folk, constructed mainly from simple, chunky piano patterns, dizzily swirling harmonies, droning strings, and Mira Billotte's booming lead vocals. It certainly has its intoxicating qualities. "The Light", in particular, is bright and fresh, allowing listeners to settle comfortably in its mysterious seams, where the incantatory vocals blur into the oceanic ebb and flow of the music. But it also exercises a darker thrall on some tracks: "Katie Cruel" is a fairytale excursion into a shadowy wood, its spindly acoustic guitar scrolling by like the silhouettes of bare branches overhead.
These are songs that seem to proceed by intuition more than order, couched in structures so loosely defined that they sometimes hardly seem like structures at all. "Hear My Call" is a slowly somersaulting waltz with wobbling pianos and a vocal line that repeatedly flutters up from its sturdy, monotonous perch. The music on Dat Rosa Mel Apibus is consistently engaging, with a lucid yet forebodingly weird quality, but it's Billotte's spectral presence that truly distinguishes it. There's no hesitancy in her oracular vocalizations, which stretch like taffy in a puller. She sounds right at home amid the sinuous, Far Eastern purr of "Sea Chanty" and "All the World Went", and leaves a contrasting, sticky residue on the bright Sesame Street jangle of "Childhood Song" and the brambly guitars of "What I See". Some might complain that these magicians only know one trick, but it's a really good one, leaving you searching for the invisible wires and hidden mirrors long after the footlights have darkened.
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