Song of India Night Queen: Review

The Beauty of the Night, rukuku

The Song of India Night Queen (NQ) being reviewed here is the current iteration. This is important to note because ten years ago, this fragrance was retooled and it was not a minor tweak; the current version bears no resemblance to the original. Anyone familiar with this scent, who has not tried this scent since then, would be well advised to retry it. 

The reasons behind such a radical change are understandable though. NQ1 was a challenging scent. A sour and bitter fruit/flower scent with a strong, smoky undercurrent, not easy to wear and very Middle Eastern in nature. The Moth Woman grew to love it though. Being a loyal insect, she was extremely saddened when, a few years back, she purchased a replacement bottle, only to find it smelled nothing like her beloved original. Disheartened, she put it aside without wearing it once. Only when she was planning to review Song of India oils, did she reconsider NQ2.

Approaching this scent takes an act of daring. From the bottle, NQ2 blasts you will a dreadful toilet cleanser stench. Based on this, you will go in expecting gold spandex, hooker heels and "hello sailor!" from a scarlet smeared mouth. What you get though is a Laura Ashley blouse, doe eyes, freshly scrubbed skin and blushing. On skin though, it completely mutates and becomes this lingering, subtle powdery delight with the heliotrope/marzipan elements not unlike Guerlain’s L'Heure Bleue, halfway through its development.

Furthermore, it NQ2's defence, it does seem the fragrance was intended to be a replication of the scent of NightScented Jessamine (Cestrum Nocturnum). The Moth Woman loves this plant. Her garden is full of it. It is not, however, the subtlest of blooms. A few days before she wrote this review, the Moth Woman was standing at her bathroom vanity, contemplating the stench of NQ2 in its bottle, thinking to herself that Cestrum Nocturnum resolutely does not smell like toilet cleaner. In the window comes a gust of fragrance from the bush of the aforementioned; it smelt EXACTLY like toilet cleaner…

This is a very long lasting scent. I applied it at noon and could still smell the delicious honey/heliotrope fragrance well after 2am. It opens with bitter almonds and hints of incense but without the smoke elements. This is followed by a super realistic night scented jessamine. These notes are short lived. Within the first hour, honey and strawberry notes take over. The strawberry is faint but gifts the mixture much needed sharpness that stops it lurching into an unbearably saccharine mess. There is also a hint of something approximating Mysore sandalwood, just a hint though. Around four hours till the end over fourteen hours away, all the other notes vanish and it becomes an enticing mix of everlasting daisy, warm powdered honey with a touch of non-specific nuts.

I am not sure how to classify this perfume because it backflips after the opening. Although the elements suggest gourmand, NQ2 never really smells like food. It smells like something far more expensive than it is and I will say, this one you love for the dry down. 

Keynotes: bitter almonds, night scented jessamine, smokeless incense, everlasting daisy, honey, strawberry

Pros:

• Cheap fun for loves of L’Heure Bleue
• Incredibly long lasting
• Very feminine (after the first moments)
• Unusual and unexpected development

Cons:

• THE OPENING
• Nothing like the original 

Available on eBay and here.

Song of India Kama Sutra

The Lion & The Lamb, Heather Cooper

You crouch, hidden in the garden bed. The smell of leaves and stems, bitter and green, kicks up with each small movement. Your heart pounds. You are shake. Sweat beads on your forehead. A small bird lands on nearby tiger lilies; you startle. Your mobile rings. You fumble in the leather messenger satchel around your neck but cannot find it. The sound of footsteps on gravel come closer... and the clapperboard snaps: "CUT!" The director wanders over.  You stand, stretch. Five takes of that scene were MORE than enough.

Later that day, you sit by the hotel pool, with a mai tai and watch seagulls dodge the incoming surf...

Song of India Kama Sutra (KS) opens bitter, green, leathery, like an extract of some innocuous looking but incredibly toxic plant, like the threat in a storm. It is the kind of scent that triggers panic attacks in the original Ancient Greek sense of the term. All this makes the Moth Woman seriously wonder whether her take on the classic Indian text that shares this scent's name, is all wrong…

Upfront, KS is very sharp, crushed stems and leaves combined with paper money in a leather wallet and strongly reminiscent of the leather chypres of the seventies like Lentheric Tweed. In the background is a quiet but distinct note of stargazer lily. This is not your standard lily though. The perfumer broke down the bloom into it component parts, boxed the petals, stems, leaves and stamens separately then arranged for them to arrive at the observers nose at different times. They also kindly left out that screechy note that tends to dominate lily based scents.  The Moth Woman does not normally enjoy lilies due to the screech factor but she loves this one and wishes more perfumers would take this approach. There is also a hint of green capsicum lurking amongst the stems. Overall, on first impression, KS is an intimidating and foreboding fragrance.

Things change though and KS drops the moodiness and becomes light open and breezy after about half an hour.  Hints of spice emerge, primarily the clove from the deconstructed lily note and overlay the softening greens. The lily phases in and out, different facets emerging at different times.

The final phase arrives two hours in, heralded by citrus note very much like the opening of Lush Karma, a bright citrus with sherbet/fruit tingles angle. By four hours it is very close to the body but it will abruptly reappear in gusts as you move or your skin warms. Toward the end, there is also a suggestion of salt, marine air/chlorinated pool. It is faint and strange but not unpleasant—and rather clever the Moth Woman feels—because such a small note works hard, powerfully evoking summer holidays and lazing by the pool at dusk.  By eight hours, all that remains is a faint marine note.

It should be noted that as well as its dichotomous nature, KS displays other odd behaviour. Every time the Moth Woman wears it, it seems little different. The notes shift around. The longevity differs. The fragrance cycles too, changing intensity and top notes and back again. Unaccountably the fragrance also occasionally becomes stronger again around five hours.

Much to the chagrin of the Moth Woman, this is becoming harder to get. Because it is outside this manufacturer’s core group of scents, she suspects KS is about to be discontinued. Enjoy it while you can.

Key Notes: bitter greens, leather, lilies, citrus

Pros:

• Good longevity for a green scent
• Decent sillage in the first hour
• Total seventies chypre flashback
• Cheap
• Very different

Cons:

• Too weird for some people
• Short opening compared to a lot of oils
• Hard to find a seller
• Possibly about to be discontinued

Available on Ebay and here.

Song of India Black Magic

Fishing Cove, The Knavocks, near St Ives, Bob Rudd

The other bridesmaids stand on the edge of the rainforest, drinks in hand, engrossed in conversation. Their words are drowned out by the sounds of the reception and the band. Stifling a yawn, you grab a vodka cocktail from a passing waiter and a take sip; it is ginger lime, your favourite. You wander out of the clearing, following one of the paths toward the waterfall. All around you, there are bushes covered in bunches of pinkish white flowers that fill the air with perfume; you pluck some and wander on. For a moment, you think you hear cheers back at the reception but then you realise it is just surf. As you reach the waterfall, a flower girl tears past you; the ring bearer is in hot pursuit. You lean against the railings, occasionally sniffing the stolen bloom in your hand.

When I was a child, on hot nights, I used to imagine myself as sitting in a huge glass of effervescent lemonade with ice cubes. It always seemed to help with the heat. Song of India Black Magic (BM) is basically the olfactory equivalent of sitting in that glass.

BM opens with an intense, nose-tingling—but in a good way—grapefruit and lime note, strongly resembling Tresca/Fresca* spiked with fresh root ginger. There's a floral note in there too, I think perhaps a rondeletia accord but it is hard to identify, sweet but not a white flower. The opening last about three hours which is decent for a perfume of this class, hesperidics.  After this point, ginger takes over and ephemeral hints of musky sandalwood haunt the mix. At around six hours, a solid marine oakmoss emerges. It stays close to the skin but lingers at least another twelve hours.

This fragrance, on first meeting, caused me one of those frustrating I-know-this-one moments. For two days, it bothered me. Then Moth Man applied his favourite aftershave, Lomani Pour Homme and it clicked; it was the opening accord for this fragrance I was recognising. BM also bears a familial resemblance to Christian Dior's Eau Savage.  If Eau Sauvage is the sophisticated rich boy and Lomani Pour Homme is his poor, uneducated but similar looking cousin then BM is Lomani's female fraternal twin who strongly resembles her brother and is a bit of a tomboy.

Keynotes: citrus, ginger, oakmoss, spicy floral

Pros:

• cheap
• great summer scent
• unisex
• unlikely to offend
• unlikely to trigger allergies

Cons:

• poor longevity for a perfume oil
• may cause a desire for discontinued beverages
• outside Australia in may need to be purchased online

* Fresca was marketed in Australia as Tresca in the 1970s.

Available on eBay and here.