“Where do you run when your life’s on the line?”
Amidst pizzicato strings Angelo De Augustine asks a question that cuts to the heart of Angel in Plainclothes. While finishing up Toil and Trouble in 2022, De Augustine wasn’t sure he would ever make another album. As a result of a debilitating condition, he had to relearn how to do almost everything, from walking and talking to seeing and hearing, not to mention singing and playing music. Despite those arduous circumstances, he has returned to the fray with an album brimming with life and gratitude.
The line from ‘Empty Shell’ sets the stage for everything that follows, a journey to the heart of what it means to be truly alive. It’s not something that can be taken for granted. “I’m on a journey where I feel like I may have been given a second chance at life, and I’d like to live it.” Which is in stark opposition to ‘Empty Shell’. Along with the guitar and strings, it is a song focused on the death of a lover. Yet at the same time De Augustine grasps the second chance he has been given, “Though they said six months you’ve been dead/ You’re still alive in my mind/ Lay down and rest/ Keep your head on my chest/ I’ll keep you safe/ Keep you sound/ Keep you deep in my heart.”
When not being hypnotised by his lyrics, one is fascinated by the instruments De Augustine uses, many are quite unusual. On ‘Mirror Mirror’ he started by using the varispeed function on a tape machine to create a drone, then added music he’d recorded using a bowed psaltery. That turned what initially sounded vaguely ominous into something more contented than contentious. Lyrically the song has an elusive quality, sometimes things are not always clear, “Now you’re bragging that you know disgrace/ Thinking you’re now a part of the human race/ With certainty, you believe you have nothing to fear at all.” But, fear is always there.
Maintaining an attitude of positivity, De Augustine also uses a number of other musicians, including harpist Leng Bian whose tones grace ‘The Universe Was Our Mother,’ background vocalist and percussionist Wendy Fraser, and Jonathan Wilson whose drumming and co-production highlights ‘The Cure’. That track parallels the similarities between illness and addiction, both outside forces able to inflict serious damage.
Using an array of instruments from an aquarion, a fretless zither known as a Marxophone, in addition to a bass recorder, a train whistle, a miniature accordion even a 1990s synthesizer version of a koto harp, De Augustine fills the musical frame with a beauty that words can barely express. The soundscapes offer a unique parallel to his desires to find instruments that can solidify the beauty he has discovered as he moves toward a future filled with new found beauty.
Taking life for granted is no longer something Angelo De Augustine desires. Moments matter as does the music he makes. Angel in Plainclothes offers a new focus, trying to find the beauty making life more meaningful. Inspired and powerful while being gentle and alive, these are transcendent moments.