In the Head of a Dreamer by Mary (Copenhagen) By Sean

Picture yourself lying in a field of long grass, it's 1969. You've kicked off your battered boots and your large flowery shirt lies open, as the sun beats down on you from a cloudless sky. You've just been to Woodstock festival, you're a little bit stoned, and lethargy has kicked in. you're ears are ringing a bit, and you're clutching a guitar that you're too exhausted to play. Copenhagen's Mary offers a soundtrack for that very moment, should you ever find yourself living it. The new album In the Head of a Dreamer is aptly titled, dealing a lot with reality and fantasy, life, death and god; it's an introspective affair, which has its high points and its lows.

As an album, it's consistent. Marie Ingerslev's Joni Mitchell-esque vocals are pleasing to the ear, if not a touch bland and whiney at times. The vocal layers towards the beginning of the album sound very 60's; it's fairly solid pop with a very individual sound. The arrangement a lot of the time sounds clumsy and awkward, the drums especially sound very out of place and badly timed, leaving you feeling like you're listening to a demo rather than a polished and complete offering.

After the first three minutes of each of the tracks your finger will impulsively press the skip button, as the vocals seem to be over by then, and what follows is fairly uninspired instrumentals, which don't really sustain the listener's interest for any great space of time.

Marie's vocals are powerful enough to work, set to a more simple musical arrangement, maybe if she followed the path of some of her obvious influences, and stripped her songs to their very minimum then they would be a more successful and rewarding listen, even if she would be crammed into the fairly condescending-sounding genre of adult contemporary.

Lyrically the album is up and down. Flaws and Wrinkles is poetic and beautifully written on paper, but doesn't work as a song, she seems to emphasise and annunciate at the wrong times, maybe it's language thing, but I think it seems as if music was added retrospectively as an afterthought to many of the tracks, which on their own are fairly nice pieces of imaginative and poetic writing. The vocals and ideas are often lost amongst the over-ambitious arrangements.

A song I really hoped I would love is He Went into a Painting, which, despite it's somewhat ugly worded title, seemed to be aiming for the painterly theme explored (much more successfully) by Kate Bush in The Architect's Dream, but lyrically she just misses out, trivialising what could be a really beautiful idea. The album seems to be like listening into an experimental rehearsal, lots of great ambition and ideas, that aren't quite fulfilled.

In the Head of a Dreamer often seems like a rough draft. Try in My Heartland is the musical peak of the album, however the problem is always that when the music is successful, the vocals don't fit, and when the vocals are effective, the music seems to clumsily bash shoulders with them. A Prayer From God is a highlight of the album, although preachy at times, the idea of being only God is a challenging and interesting one.

It's difficult to conclude with such an album. After a first listen I was on the fence, four or five more and I was in the same place, only much more comfortably. I was content to not be wholly satisfied with the album, because there are beautiful moments and it is highly listenable. It has weaknesses, but the ambition is evident and admirable. I eagerly await future projects to see if the flaws can be ironed out, if they can be then I imagine Mary to be a band to watch out for. www.marysongs.dk www.matchboxrecordings.co.uk

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