There is always something odd about the off-season in resort areas. If you visit a ski resort in July the still chairs of the lifts carry a melancholic reminder of colder days. Walking by beachfront restaurants with the decks covered with tarps for the winter makes one want to tear them off and yell, “Party!” The one common theme of off-season is quiet. It is a time where you can have the space mostly to yourself. You can be reminded that there is something to be admired in a time and place out of step with the rest of the world. Off-season is off kilter. The latest release from Imaginary Authors called Every Storm a Serenade is a salute to the off-season at a Danish beach town.
Owner and perfumer Josh Meyer has been quietly assembling one of the stronger independent perfume collection currently. Since he started in 2012 he has been steadily improving as a perfumer. He has been taking risks with his latest releases which I appreciate. Every Storm a Serenade is an aquatic fragrance. It is an aquatic fragrance built around Calone. If it was just that it would be another in a long string of Calone-based aquatics. Instead Mr. Meyer takes on the much maligned ingredient looking for opportunities to hang notes next to it which will keep it from being trite. Every Storm a Serenade succeeds at doing this.
Josh Meyer
Mr. Meyer has the basic outline of a story to go with each of his Imaginary Authors. In this case Every Storm a Serenade is penned by Niels Bjerregard. Here is the thumbnail from the Imaginary Authors website, "When Stina, a burgeoning writer, decamps to her mother’s summer house for the winter to write a book, her trip overlaps for one day (and one steamy night) with a brawny fisherman named Ulv. While she struggles to gain traction with her novel, her fixation on the mysterious seafarer results in countless unsent letters, the contents of which chronicle the spiraling psyche of lust and longing. Set on the desolate west coast of Denmark during the tourist off-season, Every Storm a Serenade is a meditative masterwork that will lull you with its well-designed sentences and intimate tone.” Every Storm a Serenade is a fragrance of contemplating a life choice in a place where there is nothing but quiet.
Every Storm a Serenade opens with the medium weight woodiness of spruce. Mr. Meyer adds eucalyptus to form a sort of faux-pine accord. It is easy to pick out the two components when I was focusing on things. In the times I wasn’t as attentive the mentholated green woodiness did remind me of pine trees growing near the shoreline. The Calone crashes into all of this like an ocean wave. At first it overwhelms everything but rather rapidly the pine claws its way back. It reminded me a lot of a high tide moment when the waves can just reach the tree line. Sea spray coating the conifers. One of the things I dislike about Calone is it is too clean a representation of the ocean. Mr. Meyer has used his top notes along with vetiver to roughen up the Calone. It adds a saline bite that is not usually there in Calone aquatics. That briny nature is enhanced further by the use of ambergris. This adds that subtle heft to the ocean accord.
Every Storm a Serenade has 16-18 hour longevity and average sillage.
Despite me going on about off-season this is a warm weather fragrance through and through. I wore it once on a cooler spring day and once on a near 90-degree day. It was much better on the second day. The heat made it more expansive. I give a hat tip to Mr. Meyer for taking on Calone and finding his own space to work within its confines. Every Storm a Serenade is a top-notch aquatic.
Disclosure: This review was based on a sample provided by Twisted Lily.
–Mark Behnke
