Australian high priest of broken hearts: J Mahon casts his spell on ‘Gold States’
The musical maestro shares his new track.
Photo: Kosmo Crocco
Emerge from hibernation, time to set sails towards the sunshine; all aboard!
It’s so easy to find beauty when everything points at it. I am tired of easy beauty and throw a dart at a list of names. J Mahon. Who is he? What does he do? Stop caring. Steal myself. He is playing tonight. Maybe I should listen to something he has done, before venturing into the night. But the shadows say I can trust him. They knew him already under different names, even before September 2023, when he revealed Everything Has A Life.
“Damn, it’s like a sickness.” (Death of the Ladies Man, from Everything Has A Life, 2023)
I crawl out of my bamboozled cocoon and precipitate into the underbelly of London. Too dark, too cold, too soon. I join other shadows, all looking for the same thing: unexpected beauty. J Mahon is waiting for us, shrouded in darkness and blue light.
He starts strumming on his guitar, and I look around with an arrogant smirk. Surely, he can’t think that this simple formula will be enough to cast a spell on me. Then, J Mahon’s Velcro voice erases my century-old isolation from real-life music, and I am already on his ship, on our way to the sunshine state “where your mind is able to roam wherever you want it to go to”.
J plays every instrument, including a gentle rain of teenage tears splashing all around. I abandon myself to the memories of everlasting summers when nothing smelled bad. Everything is happy and pure again; I beam at the sky, cradled by the thumping of Jascha Kreft’s drums.
The descending bassline leads the way to Pleasure Island. I see Pinocchio and Candlewick escaping in desperation back to a world of lies and wooden puppets. I’d rather turn into a merry donkey.
Captain J Mahon stirs the ship’s wheel. When my mind wanders, he jerks his guitar, discharging jolting electricity that rives the darkness while screams of horrors explode in my head. For a moment, I enjoy the bliss of my own destruction until crazed piano keys bring me back to the altered reality of this lucid dream.
I can see our destination at the end of the night, under clouds of golden guitars. Waves come crashing softly against the ship, yet the Sunshine State never seems to get any closer. I peacefully realize: we are sailing, not arriving.
Isn’t it, captain J Mahon? He smiles faintly, like a shy child, as a voice repeats in the morning breeze,
“It’s the golden state of mind, the golden state of mind, the golden state of mind…”
