I love most incarnations of myrrh and this is a really nice one. Its bittersweet, medicinal edge is tempered by the tonka, and tonka's earthy sweetness is reigned in by the inclusion of the aromatic herbal crispness of lavender. There's the barest tinge of something smoky and acrid, which calls to mind imagery of blazing, blackened amber, and yet this is a very cool scent, and I don't get a feeling of warmth from it at all. It makes me think of the sadly discontinued Sonoma Scent Studio Ambre Noir, a fragrance that goes hard with the smoky amber, so maybe this could be a possible, though less extreme, dupe.

I first sampled Montale's Cafe Intense years ago when I was initially getting into fragrance and perfumes. I guess I was feeling a little nostalgic for that sample a kind MUA-er sent me way back when! My recollection was that it was meant to be a coffee-forward scent, but...it is not. My partner observed that it smells like a teenage girl who typically wore a lot of candied, sugary scents and who wanted to level up with fancy florals and didn't quite hit the mark. She tried, I guess, was his conclusion. My thoughts are more specific. This is a cloying fruity-floral that smells exactly like Rose Jam from LUSH, which I bitterly loathe because that smells just like those gaggy sweet Jolly Ranchers hard candies that all the popular kids were always eating in 6th grade. Which in turn makes me think of the MOST popular girl, we'll call her Mary Lesa H., who broke off and ATE part of my sugar crystal science project that year. I hate science projects and I have never forgiven Mary Lesa H., and this awful perfume can go straight to hell.

Musc Maori from Pierre Guillaume Paris is another one that I tried a long while ago and wanted to revisit, and it's just as quietly weird as I remember. It's got milky vanilla notes of cumaru wood, which I had to look up just now, and Google tells me that basically, it's where tonka beans come from. It also features appearances by coffee tree blossom and cacao pod. I typically don't love chocolate scents, but this is like a musky, musty, ghostly packet of Swiss Miss. I say ghostly because it's a very transparent scent, and the musk alternates eerily between something etherous in spirit and warm, sweet human skin. This is not the finished cup of hot chocolate but rather the grains of cocoa trembling in the tablespoon before being stirred into the boiling milk. It's an odd but thoroughly charming fragrance.

Geisha Noire from Aroma M is a scent I first encountered via Makeup Alley, in 2004 when I was beginning my fragrance journey and spent a lot of time on the site's forums. It was a thrilling experience swapping scent samples with strangers, but the kind of strangers with whom you were slowly making kindred connections and forming, in some instances, marvelous friendships that last many years. I have hoarded my tiny vial ever since that time and finally bought a full bottle last week. Geisha Noire is an intense, golden amber and smoky somber tonka that's rich and hypnotic but before it veers too far into gourmand territory, you encounter an unexpected edge of leather and salt that keeps interesting and not so easily categorized.

I've only tried a few Commodity fragrances and own even less. The issues I have with Moss, the one I actually have, are emblematic of most of the others I've sampled as well.  They're crisp in the sense that mostly what you get is the acrid, antiseptic zest of rubbing alcohol, and they're generically cologne-y, in a plastic-y green, waxy citrus way that reminds me of every mediocre dude who talks over you in a department meeting and takes credit for your ideas, every tedious bore at a party who suggests that you're misinformed and that you should read the work of a certain subject matter expert --and news flash ya ding dong, I'm the one who wrote the work you're referencing-- and lastly, every creeper who crawls out from his cave to follow you down the street shouting HEY GIRL NICE TATS and then calls you an ugly whore when you politely request that he leave you alone. Pretty sure all of these assholes are Commodity's focus groups.

Ambre Narguilé from the Hermes Hermessence line gets a lot of apple pie references from reviewers, but I don’t get that myself. A spiced compote, perhaps. Dried fruits–raisins and plums, stewed in honey and rum and cinnamon, and left on the stove very nearly too long. It’s been cooked down to a syrupy essence of its former self, and if you hadn’t pulled it from the flame, the caramelized sugars might have started to smoke and burn. I don't love sweet fragrances, but come October I crave this one; it calls to mind a reading firelight a book you've experienced a million times (like the Secret History by Donna Tartt which I only just read but I loved it so much I'm ready to go at it again) while wearing a cozy oversized cardigan with thick cables and toggle buttons and that you probably inherited from your grandpa. Not to be confused with that awful cardigan in Taylor Swift's video. ugh, Don't get me started on that. That's another conversation for another midnight.

Heresy is the sharp green metallic floral of violet leaf, mingled with cool aromatic cedar, lofty sandalwood, and the smoked leather notes of vetiver; elements which alchemize into the austere elegance and kindred glooms of a dry, peppery violet incense. If you like the dark ambiance and nocturnal aesthetic of dungeon synth coupled with spectral visionary Simon Marsden's black and white photographs of haunted ruins and moonlit abbeys, this is a transportive scent that will spirit you away to those eerie, ominous realms.

Copala from Xinu is a beautiful first foray into a brand I’d never even heard of. Opening on a brisk lemony pine sap incense note, it evolves into an amorphous melange of golden resins and dusty vanilla robes, with a spiked ceremonial collar of pink pepper. It’s both sharp and soft and feels simultaneously contemporary and ancient, like mystical wisdom awakened in modern blood ...and I am more than a little obsessed.

Ofresia is a thoughtful fragrance of honeyed and dewy florals, sheer and sweetly luminous, lively and peppery crushed green stems, and a softly rosy, woody musk. I find it somewhat akin to Bath and Body Works OG Freesia Fields but less watery and with a certain sensibility that comes from being a little older and having more discretionary income. And maybe just more discretion, period. It’s lovely even if it is not terribly exciting. It is very good I think, for visiting your in-laws, who really only have an inkling as to the depths of your freaky weirdness, and you are trying your best to keep it that way. This is a fragrance for inducing a certain sort of serene and sensitive spirit or state of mind that reminds you to be on your best behavior even when you’re feeling salty and snippy and sassy, and it feels like it’s got scruples enough to keep your secrets.

Venise is as if the velvety moss-muscled Masters of the Universe Moss Man toy found himself in a biergarten nestled in the midst of a forest of crooked pines &twining nightshade. Seating himself under the canopy of verdant flora, the green plastic henchman orders a moderately priced sampler of lambics and goses and other sour, seasonal ales (but he’s going to expense it to Skeletor anyway) and as he’s enjoying his tiny, half-filled glass of coniferous resin and lactobacilus-y fermented grains, he notices the plants stealthily creeping closer, surreptitious snaking sneaking vines with intent to strangle. For though Moss Man can camouflage himself in foliage and control all the plants on Eternia, on Earth he’s apparently powerless and our terrestrial vegetation views him as a threat. As the air becomes suffocating with the scent of sap-filled botanical defense mechanisms, Moss Man slips into unconsciousness wishing he’d actually ordered the full-sized stein.