On the Latest Album of Hark! en Co: The Playful Maziness of Art

Shall I Compare Thee to a River’s Gleam

One could quote Shakespeare, Keats, Wordsworth or indeed Edgar Allan Poe … To speak of life’s eternally recurring struggles and delights. In the latest offering of Hark! en Co the darkly romantic character trait of Edgar Allan Poe is providing the luscious words of inspiration for the music of this timeless-sounding ensemble to dwell on. It’s not the macabre soul which the music is facing here, rather Poe’s words in these selected poems read like classicist tales of man’s short-lived presence in a world of beauty and sorrow, Poe’ s most profound side where the shadows of wistful ideas are always darkening the brightest days of life and love. An excellent premise made of essential themes for the multi-faceted composer that is Harke Jan van der Meulen to feast his musical skills on. The meanings of Poe’s poetry are limpid and clear, the music takes on an equally telling and empathetic silhouette in Harke Jan’s playful philosophy of composition.

The beautiful title of this varied collection of songs – “The Playful Maziness of Art” – speaks for itself: how one can get lost in the labyrinthian beauty of art, how one loses oneself in artistic recreations of the world and one’s place in it. Harke Jan van der Meulen didn’t want to give in to the gloom and doom of the human condition as it is so profoundly portrayed by Poe; he wanted to play with the words in a fresh celebration of human resilience and inventiveness, place the words in a musical scenery of joy and pleasure, surround them with the immaterial joyfulness music is so very capable of evoking. The melodies and voices are kind and understanding, as if they wanted to bring solace and tranquillity to the aching soul of the poet.

It’s clear that Harke Jan considers music to be one of these “incorporate things” that Poe writes about in the poem “Silence”; while it evidently “springs from matter”, music has a soul that binds it to a higher spirit of reality. There’s suffering in this all too ephemeral universe of stars, rivers and woods, in the heartache of love and loneliness, but these musicians decided to be merry and honour the beauty of it all. They devised a serenade to the beauty, the complexity and contradictions of life; it is a music that is happy to be what it is, while it is still there. Only haunted by a song called “Silence”, looming in a far-away place, lurking in the dark.

The music at times bounces around lively and roars with contentment and jubilation like on the electrifying, violet-eyed “Eulalie”. It all is a very surprising and original take on the fragility of human life and the frailty of the material body we live in; the music salutes it and embraces it with good cheer. The album feels like a joyous reunion of musicians and poets across different times, from different places. They come together to celebrate under an eternal sky of stars, camping around a fire in the vicinity of a lake or a river. They talk of love and beauty, of the artistry of it all and they feel like answering to those most beautiful forms of creation in their own musical language. I hear Hark! en Co in the company of John Cale, Donald Fagen, Joni Mitchell … the goodwill of a starman coming to the rescue in this valley of unrest of ours in the Bowie-esque voice of Jelle Paulusma … At times the music boasts the vibrant anarchy of the personality of Ziggy Stardust, at times it wears the veil of soft illusions of Joni’s “Both Sides Now”, but mostly it seems to imitate the happy sound of a bird who sings its morning song at every new day that comes. Strings and keys flutter and jump up and down as the bird moves along the tree into the sky.

The optimism and liveliness of the music by Hark! en Co is what I love most about “The Playful Maziness of Art”, somehow these musicians gave a new lease of life to the wonderful poems of Edgar Allan Poe by surrounding them with a sound of eternal youth and vitality that will keep on orbiting the eternal questions of life, softening the blow, cushioning it with strings and keys and voices. 
Each note of this complex and playful maze itself a “grain of the golden sand” of the “surf-tormented shore” that is life… slipping through our fingers.
Songs that sing of unforgettable beauty.

Joke Roelandt, November 2023