Review and SOTD: Cheeky Smile by Jusbox
Before you read this review, go look at the notes for this bad boy. I've attached them as a handy picture to this post. Don't worry, I'll wait. Back? Great. Now.... what in the BLUE HECK is that about?! It's fair to say that I came into this one with a sceptical bent. Generally, I like to smell like, well, THINGS. Y'know, fruits, or leathers, or flowers, or nuts, or ANYTHING really. I can extend that out to smelling of stuff like memories or situations, I guess, but THIS? How can I smell like something if I have no idea what it is? Can I really smell like a mismatched set of Scrabble tiles? Aside from Amber, I had little hope for recognition and excitement here. Okay, so I know Ambroxan; Sauvage is a powerhouse popular smell, after all. But ISO-E-Super is an accelerant to me, and everything that concetrates on it smells like a fragrance just waiting for the bloody smells to be added at a later date. And the others? Variations on a theme, and that theme is "confusion". So it came as a shock, when I sprayed this on, that I really liked it. It has a fizzy woody vibe from the get go, which smells resounding, and while it's synthetic it's also much deeper that I anticipated. It's a masculine scent, to me, and it's strangely fresh for a woody offering, but it's absolutely interesting and delicious and cool. As a starter, it absolutely fulfills the brief. Unfortunately, as the notes and the conceit displays, we don't move on to a main course or dessert. The nice opener scent? It becomes the nice middling scent. Eventually it becomes a nice endgame scent, albeit a little more intimate than before. Then it says its goodbyes and sashays away. It's a pleasant smell. But it's one note, copy pasted. For the price, I expect a little... modulation. Interestingly, I feel it does a fine job of conjuring up the essence of its musical pairing. The playlist takes a trot down the chemical boulevard of Acid House, with its synthetic edge and rattlecan repetition. After two hours of the music and only about three changes of pace or tone, I was screaming for something more nuanced, something different. Sure, I liked the song about the robots, but that's it. This smell? The olfactory version of a song about robots. Nice in isolation, but ultimately unfulfilling over time.