City Rain
Neil Morris Fragrances (2009)

And when I'm home, curled in your arms
And I'm safe again
I'll close my eyes and sleep, sleep
To the sound of London rain

In the first few minutes, I get an odd mixture of aldehydes, patchouli, heliotrope & green tea, which somehow coalesce into a kind of pickled vegetable accord! Just as I'm thinking this isn't for me, I get a momentary whiff of wet pavement, before it slowly settles into a scent of crisp, wet greenery along with soft floral notes, mainly heliotrope. At around the two hour mark, a clean musk joins the mix, & five hours in, the base is softly sweet, floral & faintly ambery, with a hint of a marine note. It all fades to a skin scent eleven hours in.
This one does the scent of a wet garden far better than Demeter did, but I would have preferred to smell more of the "city" part here. That smell of rain hitting the pavement after a long dry spell is as intoxicating to me as any garden, but its appearance here is disappointingly fleeting.

Neil Morris City RainNo secret to anyone paying attention that I am a Neil Morris fan. I find all of his scents to be interesting and the 2009 release City Rain is no different in that regard. Mr. Morris likes to recreate an olfactory place with each of his scents and in City Rain his inspiration is the smell of the urban milieu after a hard rain. While City Rain gets that mostly right the only way this happens in my city is if I'm standing near a garden when this rain storm happens because there is a strong floral aspect in the heart of City Rain. The top of City Rain is a mix of green tea and ozonic notes, this gives the feeling of the smell you get just prior to the thunderstorm. The almost but not quite metallic tinge to the air. In the heart of City Rain the storm has passed on by and here is where the floral character of heliotrope and honeysuckle stand out. There is a wet quality to these floral notes which is appropriate. It is in the base where you get the real feel of the aftermath of an urban rain. Here is where I get that wet pavement smell which is both mineral-like and clean at the same time. The mix of the floral heart and the concrete accord persist for a long time before having a little musk warm things up as the sun comes out in this metaphorical rain storm. City Rain like all of Mr. Morris' scents has outstanding longevity and sillage. In most of Mr. Morris' fragrances I recognize the place he's taking me to and in City Rain I recognize many of the scents of the city after a late afternoon rain.

An aldehyde light floral, musk with ozone fragrance. The inspiration for this fragrance is the air after it rains in the city and it kind of smells like this. But . . this really does not hit that mark nearly as well as Demeter's Thunderstorm or others like it. I give it 1 star out of 4. 1/4.

First, the husband test: "Nice. Fresh. Water"Since I am in fact at the beach , and having just spend the whole morning swimming, running, and breathing sea air, I can say without hesitation that this is nice, fresh _city_ water. No suntan oil, no salt. Likewise, no wet leaves or dewy buds. I'm reminded of a paint color I love called "Wet Pavement:" cool and gray; damp but not dank; misty, not musty; watery, not wan. Like Caillebotte's oddly clean and pressed rendition of Paris in the rain.