I am told it was late October 1973, on a snowy afternoon, that my father went into Ranum’s musicstore in Olav Tryggvasons gate, Trondheim, Norway. Here he bought himself a pair of Alpha Stereo Hi-Fi headphones to supplement his Garrard record player and his Tandberg Sølvsuper 12 radio. The headphones had wood-imitation on the shell, soft stuffed leather on the earpieces and individual volume control-knobs for each ear.

A couple of minutes into Magnus Moriarty’s Perhaps Interior Heart Politeness i reached for the Alphas. I stopped the record, poored myself a cup of last years Lipton’s Christmas tea, sunk into my easy chair, placed my ears into the Alphas and started the music. Never has an album fitted so well inside the gold, light and dark brown materials that surrounds the sound in my inherited Stereo Hi Fi’s.

For lack of a better description, I would say Magnus Moriarty plays music so British, it makes me want to move into a late 60’s BBC transmitter and build a nest. A form of psychedelic folk pop would be a description that cover some, but far from all of Moriartys tunes. It has elements of prog, but not really prog – more like when the old prog-bands tried to play pop music. It’s a combination of sweet vocal harmonies, light violin-arrangements, old sweet noisy synths and folkish string melodies.

Together with his co-pilot Marius Ergo, Moriarty delivers music that at one moment sounds like lost tapes from the Sgt. Pepper’s sessions, then it could be bonus material from Jethro Tull’s “Minstrel in the Gallery”. Then there’s the old analogue synths and electronics that sends beams into 60’s sci-fi television and helps scientific research in a Kubrick’s space-kube. But this is not a period piece, the juxtaposition of words like “Eurodance” and “Holy Land” strangely represents the timelessness that inhabits Moriartys music. It feels all so familiar, but “Perhaps Interior Heart Politeness” have the ability to shapeshift depending on focus and surroundings. The album is wrapped in a lo-fi production that gives a sound that’s both honest and original. It’s far from flawless, but it’s alive, rich and a treasure for the ears.

The record starts off in a cinematic mood, «For the Anoraks» has a hint of an inspired Tim Burton, setting sounds to a flock of reindeer crossing ice layered winter lakes. The film-feel is kept on to the next track, «Warning from the Skies». It keeps the winter setting, but goes from cozy mystique to what at first sounds like a folky Bond-score, but soon shifts over to “SUPERMARIONATION filmed in videcolor”. We are taken, by sample, on a visit to the puppet-television of “Thunderbirds”, and the first episode “Trapped in the sky”, aired 30. september 1965.

After this, we get to meet the whale. «Paramount Hotel» is the catchiest tune on the album, and it has a soft echo of the Fab Four in it’s utterly joyful harmonies.  The beat is a galloping one, and it turns the knob up to around 68 smiles pr minute – sweet stuff!

On “Hence the Icon with a Light On” Moriarty sings “cosmic hums through delay” – and without understanding exactly what he means by that, it still sounds a-ok! Jangly rythms, what sounds like a flute, a voice that bear similarities to the late Elliot Smith and wonderful hizzing waves and echoes of sound. Sinus & Space! Together it spells A-L-L- -R-I-G-H-T-! – like a  thin current of sugar in a already tasty cup of tea.

Magnus Moriarty has a way of singing his words so slow and stretched over the melody, that you often have to wait a second for the meaning to sink in. This Verfremdungs-effect gives the lyrical an extra dimension, and it’s a joy to follow the letters and sounds into phrases and sentences while they dance across the tunes.
The only drawback of the album is that a few of the instrumental parts get a bit dull after a couple of runthroughs. More precise this goes for “Wichita Mind Control” and “Charter to Orion”, though it has to be said that the ending of the latter is a magical journey through sliding noise.

Perhaps Interior Heart Politeness seems to me to hold up an alternative to easy commercial entertainment. As Moriarty sings on “No Tale for a Fairy”: “Tales they tell in Hollywood makes me feel so old and weary, I can try but it’s no good”. This combined with references to radio legend John Peel and the old Thunderbird series (both of the BBC), pulls in the direction of meaning, substance and ideals of serving the people quality and what they need - of information and intelligent, relevant entertainment.

On the AM frequencies, between Stockholm and Warsaw, you find BBC 4. On a mission of Public Service, embracing science and fantasy, you find Magnus Moriarty.