Sophe Lux reviewed
Sophe Lux
Waking The Mystics
(Zarathustra)
Sophe Lux toe the line between careening, surreal Dresden Dolls pastiches and the auburn moll herself, Tori Amos.
Oddly, however, it’s precisely when Sophe Lux aren’t being eccentric that their strengths are most plain. Despite its restraint, “Lou Salome” makes Sarah McLachlan’s midtempo formula oddly compelling. Vocalist Gwynneth Hanyes sounds like she’s trying, unsuccessfully, to cheer herself up whereas the rest of Waking The Mystics pushes her quirks to the fore, where they protrude and sometimes block the band. If “Lou Salome” is the anomaly, then “Marie Antoinette Robot 2073 (A Rock Opera)” is Sophe Lux at full force. The seven-minute cut sprawls from fairy mischief to a Queen classic rock fete, then back to the Tori thing and closing out in a jumble of all three. Other subtleties arrive in the Bowie-ish “Stella” and Haynes’ twilight plea “Fill Me Up With Grace,” but it’s the reverbrating crash of “Antoinette” that touches everything.
— Steve Forstneger
