TAROT, PART I

I was certain Magick Brother & Mystic Sister were one and done and have disappeared. I'm glad to see that wasn't the truth. I know COVID greatly affected many bands, Magick Brother & Mystic Sister included. It also seems they went through a lineup change, Marc Tena departing, with a new drummer, Alejandro Carmona replacing him, and flautist Maya Fernandez listed now as a guest (I believe that's due to Marc's departure). Eva Muntada and Xavi Sandoval are still there. It's 2024 and their second album Tarot Part I is nothing short of a masterpiece! Alejandro Carmona seems to have a more rock-approach to his drumming (Marc's drumming was more jazzy), so that means the music has less of that jazz-influence, but that really doesn't matter as they took that psych and prog sound to the next level, with a more pastoral and frequently spacy approach than before. Tarot Part I is simply some of the finest modern-day psych music I have ever heard! I could even imagine those who grew up in the 1960s appreciating this. "The Fool" has some really nice use of vocoder, which is unusual for psych, but it goes great with the nice vocals. "The High Priestess" is more in the psychedelic folk vein, largely acoustic. "Battle of Evermore" from Zeppelin is what this song reminds me of. Of course you don't have Robert Plant with Sandy Denny, but you do have the nice ethereal vocals from Eva Muntada. "The Emperor" has that same vibe as the 1967 Elektra album The Zodiac - Cosmic Sounds. It even has similar spoken dialog. "The Hermit" has that strange ethereal vocal in a psych setting, while "The Wheel of Fortune" starts off a bit on the folk side, but then gets proggy at the end with a dramatic Mellotron passage. So, while I don't get much of a Soft Machine vibe this time around, the occasional reminders of The Zodiac - Cosmic Sounds (turns out that Eva loves that album, so I'm sure the vibe of that album on "The Emperor" was intentional), acoustic Zeppelin, Ultimate Spinach (particularly "Pamela" from their self-entitled debut), and psych in general, is what I do notice. There is that MB&MS style, most particularly with Eva Muntada who does actual singing, but still does her ethereal wordless voices as well.

I didn't quite pay close attention to interviews by members of this group, but back in 2020 when they released their debut, they were already hinting at recording music inspired by the Tarot. I'm certain if it weren't for COVID, I would have seen the Tarot albums likely surfacing around 2022 but that didn't happen, for obvious reasons. Tarot I is simply some of the finest modern-day retro-psych I have ever heard! The second installment will appear on November 22, 2024. I saw some articles stating the second installment would appear within a couple of months after the first, but that never happened, and that was probably a bit unrealistic (record pressing plants are more backlogged than ever, that's why albums take longer to be released after they were recorded). Tarot Part I is everything I imagine the band going for that follow-up. They simply upped the ante for some of the finest psych and prog going these days and this album deserves no less than a five star rating!

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