Rain on tree-lined streets, organic and urban at the same time.
A huge foggy opening of oak bark and oakmoss and oak-y sweet clary sage that calms down quickly to powdery ash and sweet orange flower water.
Ambiguous and androgynous, city gardens and paved forests. I like it on other people.
This song is best sung sloppy, and listened to in earphones while walking.
A funeral in the rain.
Wet ashes and limes, rose thorns, black pepper, black umbrellas and dirt.
Over in two hours.
Rather elegant, actually.
The name is from a Victor Hugo poem: Hermann, at my side, seemed like a shadow.
A wet song:
Juliette Has A Gun’s Moscow Mule is the perfect mirror of the cocktail, down to the copper cup.
The first sip is a citrus twist, followed by big swallows of sparkling ginger ale. A wooden muddler mixes in clear vodka musk, until only the metal mug remains, a brassy mineral aftertaste.
A good happy hour scent.
*
This song has a good kick to it.
Fresh and fun and fashionable–a mermaid in spangled spandex and designer seashells.
Wet flowers bloom strong, then ease into sugary herbs, water mint and those funny green lake apples that float on the surface in the summer. A bit later salt cascades into the sweet, the sharp edges of the crystals biting like ocean water.
I liked the advertising insert enough to look for it in the store–it fades fast. A pick me up rather than a long wear, but the lack of white musk is refreshing.
This is also fun and fashionable and fresh–
Dark Saphir opens with a bomb siren of green violet and spices, then grows louder with industrial roses–they’ve been stripped of innocence and turned neon blue, fluorescent sillage at arms length that doesn’t settle down.
An hour later the blitz is still on, metallic flowers and galvanized seltzer rain. Eventually it cools to a clean patchi-oudish clear-coat that lasts all night.
Complicated and tense–one to wear when sporting thorns.
This one is also tense and galvanized , in a good way.
I get amber and salt, then… nothing.
A page turning, old paper, perhaps.
Half an hour later, a faint powdery sweetness develops, but it’s not exactly pleasant.
After two hours watery smoke sits under the skin.
The “book cover” is pretty, though. I’d have that as a poster on my wall.
*
A good song for when you feel a bit salty:
Bat is entertaining, but makes me feel like I’m in a nature documentary narrated by David Attenborough.
“The species Chiroptera wakes in his cave, rife with mineral dirt, dust and a trace of smoke, hungry for the tropical fruits of his diet. Bananas and figs sustain him for several hours, but eventually rain hinders his foraging, and he must find refuge in the green forest floor, hiding under his own leathery wings in the woody undergrowth until it passes.”
This weird little song was in the soundtrack for Batman & Robin and might be the best thing about that whole movie.
No.
Just. No.
This does not smell like some sexy anthropomorphic Furry wet dream musk, this smells like road kill during rutting season. Shrieking tire residue and terrified mammal anal gland excretion.
It won’t scrub off. My skin still smells like turtle pee and tarmac and rot-gut bourbon. I am not okay.
My cat is not okay.
*
This hit me with pruned roses in a vase, overly sugared lemonade, then amaretto non-dairy creamer–gorgeous wild things tamed and tempered to be generic.
I felt the need to mind my dirty mouth, to check my shirt buttons for too much cleavage.
Then the guy said, “You smell like my mother.
So that’s that.
I’m not often one for acapella, but this is kind of amazing.
The bottle is gorgeous. I want it to hold all my secrets and mist me with strength and sex and knowledge.
It doesn’t.
Instead, I am sprayed with slush and rock-salt from a road plow, and pelted with rotting strawberries, and wow, does Thierry Mugler ever blow loud and long on that truck horn.
Whew. Not for me.
All the love for this woman–and I adore this salty song.
kira a. gold 