Devon Welsh, the singer of Montreal duo Majical Cloudz, has increasingly earned his rep as an exceptionally powerful frontman. In concert, over Matthew Otto's understated electronics, his deep voice commands a beguilingly serious sort of attention. He stares members of the audience directly in the eye. On "Childhood's End", the first single off their evocatively titled Matador debut Impersonator, Welsh hones the recorded means of recreating this direct, intimate, and emotionally piercing effect. While 2012's impressive Turns Turns Turns EP signaled Majical Cloudz' streamlined move towards confident, personal lyricism-- it had "suddenly become very much about what Welsh is saying," Lindsay Zoladz wrote then-- "Childhood's End" is made of words. You cannot easily move past its time-stopping narrative of innocence lost by a father shot and killed outside.
There is a potent duality to the song's light musical mood and exceedingly heavy themes. Welsh says, with this new material, his goal is "to communicate a lot with as little as possible," a patient, minimal sound that avoids the pitfalls of style or genre by subscribing to none at all. It's something many artists strive for but few achieve. "Childhood's End" is one of the most compelling and singular attempts at it I've heard in some time-- calmly expressive, charged and moving.
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/15194-...childhoods-end/
