This is the original limited edition featuring the vinyl and cd with two additional tracks. From one record to the next, Michael Frei, Hemlock Smith’s mastermind, creates an ever more personal body of work. If this means advancing as a solitary figure (or almost), so be it. Four years ago, Everything has Changed took the form of a well-surrounded solo album. Songs that were sketched out alone before they were given to caring friends to play on, arrange and embellish. Today, Before the Grace of Dynamite rekindles this idea but takes it even further. The plan this time: a man, a piano, a microphone. It’s in his cellar that Hemlock Smith crafted these 17 songs, opting for live recordings and acoustic sounds… before handing them over to producer, guitarist and friend Fred Merk (17F). Adding sonic landscape and texture, Merk also integrated some ethereal steel guitar by Andy Ellison and a very aristocratic clarinet by Jean-Samuel Racine (Boulouris 5). They all took their ease on those very brief songs – mostly under 3 minutes long – which are nevertheless incredibly rich in depth and flavor. Because in Hemlock Smith’s world, miniature means going for the essential, with the stubborn thoroughness of the craftsman. These tunes are meant to be tasted like the last dessert of a meal; small but still worthy of a great artist. The album’s common thread is the piano, deploying a palette of subtle nuances, only seemingly minimalistic. Jumpy, hypnotic or melancholic, it sways between wicked nursery rhymes (Blacks and Whites / A Single Breath This Futile Bird, I Found My Baby Dying), pocket sonatas (Celebrate, It’s All A Game), liquid ballads (Still Waters, The Hollow Bells) and dusty instrumental interludes (Gropiusallee, By The Grace Of The Dynamite). With only a few restrained additions, its whole conveys a sense of magnetic purity. Michael Frei, ever the old teller of tales, does the rest and summons all the usual suspects (and culprits) we’re expecting to find in his music. Mythical figures, classic icons and fictional characters appear in this literate album that nevertheless doesn’t take itself seriously. The blind bard Moondog stands shoulder to shoulder with the damned poet Baudelaire, bluesman Robert Johnson leaves his spot for the enigmatic Mr. Philips in songs that unwind their foggy universe, between a tale and an anecdote. Stories unfold as the border between true and false, reality and legend, memory and fantasy becomes blurred and fades away. And that is quite normal for this discreet musician who hides behind a multiple-faced alias. And whose solo escapades are forever the opportunity to find another self.