It isn’t easy to describe the charm of the phantasmagoria that permeates Parannoul’s music. Like a surreal kaleidoscope that winds up feelings of yearning and suffering into nostalgia, the haunting sense of familiarity is inexplicable. The dreamy riffs that blended emo, shoegaze, and bedroom pop on 2021’s To See The Next Part of the Dream make a return here on Parannoul’s third full-length album. Parannoul has been nothing if not prolific in the past two years: collaborations with Asian Glow, sonhos tomam conta, Della Zyr, and Fax Gang alongside a new age side project under the moniker Mydreamfever. Though they’ve branched out in all sorts of new directions, perhaps the most impressive was the collab EP with Asian Glow titled Paraglow. Showcasing some of the best shoegaze that I’ve heard in years, the explosiveness and raw emotion on tracks like “Wheel” were utterly captivating. A stylistic shift away from the more emo-influenced sounds of their previous work, Paraglow and Asian Glow instead dived headfirst into jazz passages and sweeping crescendos. After the Magic sits comfortably between that experimentation and To See The Next Part of the Dream: more evolution in the vocal arrangements and instrumentation but retaining the core sentimentality behind the passages.
The most impressive thing about Parannoul has always been the fact that it’s a one-person project. Despite using VSTs for instrumentation on To See The Next Part of the Dream, there was a certain charm underneath its fuzzy tones, a pixelated quality to the guitar’s melodies and countermelodies. While After the Magic also synthesizes a lot of its sounds in MIDI pads, adding strings and horns balances the digital and analog on a razor’s edge. Densely layered as always, the guitars still collide with the sweeping instrumentation to evoke sentimentality but it’s a little lighter this time around. Where To See The Next Part of the Dream is gritty and melancholic at heart, After The Magic’s dreamier sounds are promises of what lies beyond the escapism. The harmonized vocals on “We Shine At Night”, the shimmering synths and chirping on “Parade”, and the climax of strings on the title track all converge towards tranquility. Even the small electronic influences of breaks, synths, and phaser effects mesh well with the reverberating guitars.
If that was all After the Magic had to offer, it might have been nothing more than a quiet follow-up. But for Parannoul, experimenting laterally isn’t enough. Perhaps the most impressive part of this album is how much more developed their voice has become since To See The Next Part. The soaring choruses, emotional screams, and energetic delivery aren’t as heavily filtered through the wall of sound. Songs are slower, allowing the acoustic passages to unwind together with lyrics of longing and forgotten memories. Although Parannoul shifts towards an upbeat sound on this album, his songwriting still touches upon the fragility of the human condition. As the album title suggests, the songs search for a greater meaning beyond our spark for life. Even as the magic of our mementos fade to gray, there needs to be something to push us forward. It’s certainly not as self-depreciative or corrosive as To See The Next Part of the Dream but the existential questions linger. On “We Shine at Night”, Parannoul laments how quickly the magic disappears: “Sepia-filled days recorded in an old photo album/The night sky that I can’t think of anymore/And the promise that I forgot/Fireworks continue, but we quickly lost the light”.
Despite a rather different approach this time around, the mood reversal on After the Magic works well. Functioning as two sides of the same coin, it balances the bittersweet emotions of Where To See The Next Part of the Dream with its hopeful search for what lies beyond those fragmented feelings. Though the album’s trajectory can feel a little front-loaded, it still brings forth those fleeting emotions that so many of us long for once we’ve unknowingly passed them. Even at moments where it feels like the album should collapse underneath its own density, there’s just enough delicacy to thread through. As it closes with the title track, Parannoul makes a promise: “When the magic disappears and the door opens/Dream erodes, Someday somewhere, we’ll meet again”. Maybe there really isn’t anything that could compare to those magical moments that we slowly fade from our memories. But as we continue to seek for what comes after the magic, we might just find something else that we chase for the rest of our lives.
Must Listens: Polaris, Insomnia, Parade
