My Review: Gaudi - Theremin tribute to The Smiths

My Review 

Gaudi - Theremin tribute to The Smiths

Shivers: the universe that becomes compact on the skin of the heart to transfer itself into the history of a human journey. They are the marvellous crumbs of an infinity that is impossible to know, but by being content with their form and substance one finds oneself feeling like a better person, which is a really good start.

In music, shivers certify the encounter with emotion, often indissoluble bonds are born, certainly for a few moments at the centre of one's world.

And, when you give them space, some Thanks are born, capable of becoming mountains of beauty, magnets on the rocks to make a love stable.

Gaudi has done this, in a perfect way, leading the scribe into oceans of joyful tears for his generous bequest: five roses on his sensitive feelings, his most intimate world, his account of an infinite love, find specification and validity for the method chosen, for the respect shown, for the accuracy in not falling into the banality of expression of covers that would have ruined everything.

True love evaluates and must be careful: the Artist started here and he understood that the Mancunian duo Morrissey/Marr cannot be reproduced because uniqueness is impossible to be copied or pasted.

Human sensitivity is an antenna capable of picking up the mystery, what is  known, a complexity that is often difficult to decipher.

And Gaudi decided to use a special antenna to thank the Smiths. To make it clear that the beauty, the uniqueness, the richness of the Manchester band has such specific and intense characteristics that a respectful device was needed. The wonderful singing of the poet from Stretford, although sometimes crooked, with imperfections, is untouchable. As are Marr's magical fingers. He chose the only instrument that could contain all this on a structural level, thanks to his knowledge of more than twenty years and having understood that in this way he would have given a specific sense to the whole, not trivialising but making even clearer that uniqueness I wrote about before.

Theremin is the instrument of the soul, the slap that educates to the true recognition of sound, for its pitch and intensity.

The voice and the violin, so distant from each other, find in the executive timbre of Theremin the possibility to compact and make feasible an infinite enchantment.

Once he took the decision to play this expressive diamond, Gaudi did not select the songs in a superficial way: he turned to options that took into account his Thanks and the characteristics of the instrument so that everything would be flawless. Having achieved perfection in the choice of songs to work on, everything could focus on the performance, which had to be excellent.

This Thanks sweeps away the dust from the ageing that the passing of time causes against our will: Gaudi has sprayed old feelings onto the notes, increasing them in intensity. Let there be room, then, for melancholy, pain, frustration, with this resounding device that fixes beauty with its back to the wall, that of eternity.

The Smiths' roses are not songs, but precisely the queens of flowers: five queens that Gaudi has made equally immortal with his visionary skill.

The absence of the voice is not replaced by the Theremin, but rather it is analysed and brought to a sensorial level: the structures have been made daughters not only of the melody but also of the words, like a brush that wisely does not fill in the holes but gives meaning to what gravitates around it. This is the true masterpiece of this bouquet of roses: managing to render immortal the singing of the bard of Stretford, with the thorns that protect it so that the antenna, played in this way, performs the miracle of not offending.

Listening to roses, when they represent deep love, turns into a gift, being worthy of which must become the main aspect. It is unquestionably positive to feel Gaudi's soul trembling, sweating, making itself small while performing an enormous gesture.

A work of this calibre should be studied because every drop that falls on this listening helps us to understand the greatness of The Smiths: this is the rose that is most visible, it should be noted because Gaudi has found an intimate way to bring us back before the Mancunian band with greater respect.

Now let's go near this bouquet, with a deferential inner silence, because beauty is ready to make us yet another pleasure and privilege…

Song by Song

Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me

First rose.

The fog descends, the flight of the seagulls is filled with bitter liquids in the eyes and the devastating piano welcomes the Theremin that, as we note and notice from the beginning, also participates in the musical part. And it is undeniable that this delicate antenna breaks our breath and brings us the same tears as those birds. It is heartbreaking, the child of a free-falling abyss. Gaudi, supported by sublime gift companions, gives the song all the meaning while Morrissey cries with us...

Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want

Second rose.

Where everything seems to lighten up because of Johnny Marr's incredible talent, Gaudi enriches the sinuosity of this rose with small, almost veiled arrangements. The Theremin gives us Morrissey's voice, without vocal cords but with veins full of blood, walking on the dew of a desire that wants to be fulfilled. The oscillations are simply emotional states in fervid exhibition.

I Know It's Over 

Third Rose.

With this gift, the queen of marginalisation, of incomprehension, of the fiercest solitude, becomes a wave that rises into the sky, a devastating whirlwind. Gaudi has grasped its depth, has by no means diminished its intensity and grants us the beauty of an embrace wet with pain and petals in free fall. The Theremin, which replaces Morrissey's vocals, uses the beating of the wings of those drops in flight to stop our hearts...

Asleep

Fourth Rose.

The lump in the throat buries any attempt to achieve happiness: Gaudi puts forty years of devotion between his fingers and all this leads us into the night dust of nervous and selfish blinks. The Smiths' song here enhances the lyrics and makes the music a merino wool blanket, careful not to let us feel temperature changes in a heart busy trembling.

Well I Wonder

Fifth rose.

Please bring oxygen and the courage to live: Well I Wonder, in the hands of Theremin, is a portable heart attack which crosses the body to paralyse it. It is no longer an antenna, no longer Gaudi's palms and fingers that translate but make real our struggle with the air that abandons us, shatters us, shows us the way out of this existence. 

The talent here becomes uncontrollable and these sound waves go beyond human comprehension: they dilate the steps and it is impossible not to remember this rose that, as we walk, buries our strength since the knees buckle.

And the final act of what we are is listening to a flower which was born on 20 May 1982 and that forty years later is still alive, because its light will never go out…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

15th May 2022