September Scent Mixtape

Vivian Medithi on scents and the songs to pair them with.

“coil” by crushed // neo rose by nomenclature

neo rose is a perfume I love so much I considered never writing about it at all. Although I don’t know that it’s a truly exceptional scent—the sole Fragrantica review reads in part, “The unisex patchouli rose has been done to death and it has been done better than this one. [...] Just a Meh.”

In the early 2010s, my family visited Sri Lanka; I forgot most of this trip, save for the part where we visited a tea plantation (their words, not mine). On the second floor of a huge wooden barn, we witnessed thousands upon thousands of tea leaves, laid flat to dry like little green minnows.

I’m trying to figure out how to tell you about the scent without resorting to tautology, but that is the magic of olfaction—every object has its own particular smell.

There’s black tea in neo rose, adding an earthy, herbal dimension to base notes of patchouli and white wood; the choice of white wood feels particularly apt for a floral chypre, not quite as severe as cedar. Turkish rose, jasmine and freesia are enlivened by a spritz of bergamot and a crack of pink pepper, but this perfume still feels more woodsy than floral.

Anyway, when it comes to smelling (or sounding) good, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to get where you need to go. crushed, the LA duo of Bre Morell and Shaun Durkan, understand this intuitively. So yeah this is “shoegaze” and it has a little trip hop influence (shoutout to Ivy) and yes I have heard a guy say this would be perfect on the Garden State soundtrack. But turn on their February EP extra life and it’s obvious: wearing your influences on your sleeve is only gauche if you fail to live up to them.

The jangling guitar riffs on “coil” propel everything forward, even if Morell and Durkan are singing about feeling stuck and indecisive. Their vocals are fuzzed out, whispering and sighing at and over one another. That’s on top of the microsamples buried all over the EP, degraded and reversed for additional texture.

The net effect is smudged bliss, like fog between trees. “All the time that we spent coiled up/it won’t seem to unwind.” The deeper you step into the forest, the closer the woods and the haze seem to press. “Is the distance I’ve walked enough?/I can’t seem to decide.” Suddenly—a wild rose, growing far off the beaten path, not one of those botanical garden heavyweights. You crouch down to stick your nose in—rose is one of the most recognized and reproduced scents on the planet. You take a big whiff. It smells perfect.

IN THE QUEUE 

THE PERFUME CABINET