Memories. Oh, memories. The nostalgia of youth, of those times when we did so much that our energy seemed inexhaustible. A feeling of infinite freedom, which almost contrasted with the ad for the Duracell bunny – and the load that never ends.
We ran, we hid, we jumped, we smiled. Our friends were our escape, and our escape was our friends. We never want to run away from it – that’s why we remember everything with such longing. Not that we are not happy now, of course, but time, maturity, and responsibilities have changed. But it’s time to dream again. To think of that moment where we are invincible. To close our eyes and go where our imagination takes us.
We have arrived. We’re in New Zealand. The urge to rejuvenate reappears with Mark Perkins, better known in the music world as Merk. As we stroll along and the birds hum, the right soundtrack could only be his second studio album, “Infinite Youth“.
Infinite Youth
And it’s with this infinite youth that we cross over into eleven different pieces of life. Separated by 39 minutes, we feel the rhythm of Metronomy, a bit of Weezer, that bubblegum pop that Alfie Templeman puts in our heads, but, above all, we find a multi-instrumentalist who knows how to use his God-given gift very well.
H.N.Y.B, or Happy New Year Baby to our friends, immediately throws those sounds from the seven corners of the world at our heads. And suddenly, we get into the mood of the artist and just want to listen to more.
We move on to GOD. That start adds to the cauldron a bit of Entertainment, from the French Phoenix. “Nothing Can Slow Me Down” – and it is indeed with this pace that we seem to reel to the end of the record.
American Parties brings Talking Heads to the fore, in their track This Must Be The Place. Impressive how in such a short time we have already covered a bit of music industry history.
We may be doing Laps Around The Sun, but it’s at this 365-day pace that we feel on cloud nine.
Something New can’t get out of our heads. And, honestly, we just want to grab that one person we love most in the world.
Not even on purpose, I was still riding a Canoe at the weekend. And nothing better than… a Canoe Song, by the river, with dolphins by our side also accompanying what is being heard on the surface of the earth.
My Love is so beautiful that we don’t want to let it out of our ears and we might have spent what some describe has a bit too much time listening to it on a loop. It’s that kind of song.
And with the warm weather beginning to come down on us here in Portugal, all we want to do is take a Deep Dive. We see the little fishes dancing to the sound of the speaker in the middle of the dive. Pronouncement of a good song? Without a doubt.
As we draw to the end of the album, Happiness is mellow, with a powerful synth, and brings us to the most hidden tear in our eyes. Merk, happiness will definitely come around again. We should never get discouraged, or run away from what we are and want in the future.
But She Loves You accompanies the previous song. The record may be rawer than the initial dance, but it’s so beautiful you just want to hear it again.
And we close as we started. Six minutes and thirty-four of beautiful pleasure, with the song Infinite Youth, fitted into our best and biggest dream, as if our lives were looping in front of us.
We woke up from this dream. We smiled. Because better than memory is knowing that that moment we dreamed of really happened. And “Infinite Youth” is just that: our life is so rich and tasty that we will never want something else.
More on Merk:
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