Let's start mathematically. Lilium is to the band Sixteen Horsepower in exactly the same ratio as Calexico is to Giant Sand. In comparison with the debut album "Transmission of all the good-byes", which was recorded solely by bass player Pascal Humbert, the number of band members taking part in Lilium has doubled with the entry of Jean-Yves Tola. On one track of the album, which runs for exactly 45 minutes, you can even speak of a congruence of both line-ups, when 16 Horsepower singer Dave Eugene Edwards grabs the microphone on "Whitewashed". But we're already approaching the boundaries of a too mathematical strategy. Music lives from, on and through emotions. And these just can't be expressed through logarithms, deductions and post decimal positions.

So let's switch heart and soul back on and enjoy the dark moments that the desert pair has carved out of frugal harmonies. Veritable clouds of melancholy pass over threateningly, phantoms of desperation and dissension. The hoarse voice of Kal Cahoone (Tarantella), who breathes the opening line "Didn't mean to cause such a scandal" into a translucent nothingness created by guitar, melodica and strings, already banishes the slightest flicker of hope. "But if they cheered it wasn't for me." An explicit announcement. Therefore giggly persons have to stay outside when the decent Francophile melodies hang their heads.

And they do that often and amply on "Short stories". People wail and deplore, sigh and regret, to carefully gradated sounds. Songs have titles like "Sorry", "Miles away" or "Sense and grief". Buoyant it is not. But touching. When dEUS-leader Tom Barman and Cahoone apologize in Spanish that they cannot love each other anymore ("Sorry"). When Edwards utters, with unctuous lethargy, "Ever weak/However strong/They are most beautiful before they're gone". When also Tom Grant of the cautiously proceeding Czars only finds words full of bitter desperation: "Is it any wonder/I've fallen in love/With falling in and out of love with you/And watching you burn." And already the listener is set ablaze.

7 (out of 10)