My Review: Gene - Olympian

 

Gene - Olympian

‘Life and dreams are sheets of the same book. To read them in order is to live, to leaf through them at random is to dream...’.

Arthur Schopenhauer 

An ancient bubble, small in size, sits in the musical sky of a delicate moment, that 1995 that had the burden of giving notes new shapes, of giving oxygen, of making people forget the pain of the previous year and of keeping the intention of helmsmen with a different task, an escape from dirty rock, stained with blood and frustration.

London, the queen of this art, moves its horses, its queens and kings in the hustle and bustle of an effervescence that was born with Suede just before.

The blood pressure of enthusiasm circulates in the streets, in the clubs, on the radios, an effervescence that resembles the coronation of a new dream.

The Gene's sweep everything away, heedless, at ease only in their wandering through the areas where everyone had not set foot for a long time. Music not as a vehicle for confrontation, but as a marble imprint to be regarded with suspicion. We find, thus, clear signs of migration, a turning off of the spotlight on the superfluous and a channelling, instead, of a close and dense series of relationships with doubts, sorrows, the initial forms of bewilderment and depression, without, however, lacking the desire to inflate the romantic vein, to put the dream and positivity in contact with each other. Olympian, to begin with, considers these elements to broaden notes and tighten wrists, in contradictory acts that stun, but without lacking a fascination that smells of antiquity. It is a work imbued with an English imprint such as we have not enjoyed in a long time: the land of Albion was losing its roots, its temperament and, much more seriously, its sense of belonging to a conservative side that seemed to be dying.

Songs with lapels and silk gloves, with the dim light making the gaze an unavoidable effort: Martin Rossiter's realities and mood swings are razor-sharp, icy kisses in the fire of a politely shouted goodbye, a gentleness not devoid of cynicism and assorted decadence, in a general framework where gloom seems like a stained rainbow on a working day. A daytime album, as annoying as the hours spent at work, one made up of an absolute reluctance towards the joyful exchange of movements, whether physical or mental. 

The structure of these eleven compositions is that of a ship sailing through calm and impetuousness with the same approach: watching to learn, without breaking down. In order to do this, each song swings, like a wave full of unexpected resources, without remaining anchored to the ropes of the song form, in evident chiaroscuros, like ascents and descents, in which the rhythm changes also highlight the need not to encounter boredom.

Although Steve is an excellent guitarist, we only notice one solo in the whole album: this fact alone shows how the four guys have determined specific artistic choices, in order to give the listening world that compactness that, especially in the stupid movement called Britpop, used to show with cupidity. But we should never cease to consider the London band as an inaccurate, rebellious miracle, unwanted and undigested by the majority of Brits, as everything heard in this work does not show the future at all, denying that joy and silliness that they were looking for instead.

Each fragment is a dream, an act of life to be devitalised, a tooth affected by nostalgia, of memories as bad as wolves in the forest of a pop devoid of wisdom and maturity. Gene, on the other hand, bow to time, to stories no one spends their days on, and tell existences of marginalisation without a spotlight, as God commands...

An album made of questions, of lowered curtains, of old books, of a language that is sometimes archaic, at other times of an almost unhinged immediacy. The splendid cover is enough to be able to tune in in advance, the play of colours, the penumbra, the feeling that listening has to do with a journey backwards, and that is exactly what Gene Ship accomplishes.

These are power games that the three main instruments enact with the support, at times, of strings that widen the breath to better explore the emotion of tears swirling in the chest, like lead-stained ankles. 

The singing, a seal of quality and abundant doses of tremors given unsparingly, is an honest fist inside our carelessness, a perfectly rude invitation to make us feel guilty, without renouncing a melody that obtunds, sows reflections and conquers, despite the fact that the words are wreaths of wandering thorns, on an often punishing mission: Martin makes you feel like a sea port, welcoming and always operational, but above all the place where containing his marasmus eventually makes your legs bend. The rhythm section is a constant amazement: the group seems to have decades behind them, with strategic moves that align the planets of beauty with those of wealth. Almost silent, and when thunderous, it always knows how to grant the illusion that this sonic storm will soon come to a halt. 

They can paint, draw, print, photograph the possibilities of unwanted developments, to defeat predictability. And it is here that Olympian stands out, detaches herself from her colleagues and leaves, in a carpeted living room to enjoy cups of absinthe and whiskey, without a care in her wrist. Slaps, hugs, caresses and then her, the queen of the album: intensity, no matter what. Nothing is ephemeral, light, destined to disappear in these eleven compositions, in a pact where memory is guaranteed, the preservation of these seeds smelling of sacredness and uncomfortableness to which one does not deny the consent to live in the perimeter of one's own beat

Observing the releases of that year, one realises how nothing could have foreseen the band's success: songs like these are suitable for restless souls, sweet until the sun stops pouring heat on their skin, for hearts that lose their security by inquiring, for minds that always feel the desire to allow themselves the luxury of hesitations and confusions. 

And then there is that delicate propensity to marginalise others: these texts are difficult to discuss, as one is overcome, from the outset, by a kind of concern for the inhabitants of the ship, not to mention the helmsman, who often seems to throw words under the skin of the waves in order to crucify them in the cruellest immediacy.

We grab the anchor, the lifebuoy and set sail. Eleven waves wait to be experienced without fear...

Song by Song

1 - Haunted By You

When we set off, we do so with decision, with rhythm, with that force that gives enthusiasm and vigour. We immediately have the coordinates of the journey: courting the empire of mystery, floating between words that sound like slaps relegated to the dark cellar of our hearts. The melodic search is imbued with the corrosive backbone of the guitar, the bass that sounds like the twin brother of a dynamite educated to explode with softness, and the drums that drag take the song on their shoulders and lead it into the middle of the ocean

Rock takes off its sequins, its nails painted with silliness, and turns into a snake that kisses the early seventies, those of the American shore, with the sharp, scratchy notes of the guitar. 

2 - Your Love, It Lies

Magic is a prostitute that often lies in the naivety of unconscious talents. The song is a play of lights and moods, of raids and different brakes: the melody knows different possibilities and manages to soar in the presence of lightning, making every dream weep. The blues that Steve hints at is an intimate miracle that is immediately ousted by an impetuous impetuosity pregnant with need, in an angelic marriage that allows the drum breaks to take the lead. Martin's voice is a ribbon that suffocates uselessness, and does so with firmness and a slight vibrato in the lower register, for a result that is a timeless Munch cry, with no need to gape... 

3 - Truth, Rest Your Head

This is what has been missing from English music: the enchantment that resides between melodic waves in search of a crash, of an electric charge that follows a series of massed softnesses. As with the first two tracks, this too employs the stratagem of dualism, of diversification, of faces rotating within the promiscuous soul of effervescent solutions. The voice is a romantic cylinder, the words much less so, and in this coexistence nothing appears forced because the structure, of Alternative matrix, ends up in a perfect jingle-jungle, in which the sixties of Swingin London return in the fullness of their decadent lustre... 

4 - A Car That Sped

One cries, in polite slowness, over this ocean with trembling hands: A Car That Sped is a scudding, sudden fluorescence that bends the night and gags the will to live. All the tradition of the streets of Marble Arch seems to come together in this poetic, neurotic tale, a condensation of weed (Steve's guitar is a heart-stopping scratch) that seems to cut us off from any chance of finding the dry silk handkerchief. The piano at the beginning and the synth at the end are the logistical switches of this stunner apparatus, where the rhythm, the clap-handing, the interplay of the instruments' effects are like dough that has to rise...

5 - Left-Handed

The New York Dolls look for grandchildren and find them: like a shake of the sky, in the opening part of the track, everything seems to indicate to us that the four know how to spill oil in their movements and attitudes. But then it veers, like an inevitable climb, towards the territories where they can prove that cohesion, sound architecture must always prevail. We have the clear feeling that this jewel full of neuroses is just a foretaste of a future to come...

6 - London, Can You Wait

Here is the past (evident right from the outdated words chosen by Martin) continuing in these delicate touches, in a grey atmosphere that seeks the sun and instead immediately loses track of it, because it revolves around mystery, darkness, a request that will not be granted. 

When it comes to the refrain, the progression of the chords and the splendid filth of semi-distortions become a stranglehold on the neck that kills the dream, to make every address die in the inevitable physical loss...

7 - To The City

High-voltage cables shove in our faces an urgency that pilots our astonishment into the channels of an unexpected mode: linking the roar of The Who, The Kings, The Angriest Jam, to get to shake the solidity that we had encountered up to now. The song thrives on small areas of calmness, but then, when the bass, drums and guitar decide to be a train, it becomes clear that nothing can be stopped.

Not forgetting an ending that smells of a band that should never be mentioned at random...

8 - Still Can't Find The Phone

Would you ever imagine this band capable of showing rays of light, of financing the dreams of the return of the clamorous musical corridors of the Sixties? Here is a new treaty of non-belligerence, using the courtesy of brushstrokes, both guitar and drums, then indulging in a few electric pounds, but never overdoing it. It is poetry with rhythm, with the desire to sample the skill of arrangements that are shown here with light touches of piano...

9 - Sleep Well Tonight

This second side is full of surprises, clichés are broken down, the story is painted with elegance and hinted distortions, to bring the dream phase into contact with gentler galaxies of reality. Martin's pen here invades every lane, you can't compare it to anyone, and darts across the page where pain and tension become twins in a delivery where poetry reigns in its dormant breath. And the organ gives that sacredness that every dream must have....

10 - Olympian

Life dies, the beat is a distant memory, belonging to others, and the need for Rossiter becomes a request that yields, on the white keys of the piano, on the pulsating bass almost shyly, only to find through Steve's guitar, a zone where all frustration can land. Nocturnal, epic, slow, dreamy, in reality this track is the stove that warms any attempt to give music the last rites, as harmony and melody are spouses who leave home to play cards with rhythm, dry and tense…

11 - We'll Find Our Own Way

Magic is a rarity, in the hands of Gene, who decide to end this debut album with a palm tree full of slow-falling wind in Swinging London, to make us feel the nostalgia of time, of impulses, and to do so they play on rhythm changes, on a classical scaffolding where the initial acoustic guitar finds, along the way, companions of chattering and vapours, a sweet tension that knows implosion, to trespass into a blues attitude while having more evident psychedelic atoms, but always in the context of a pop song that proudly shows its fragility.

It seems that Martin wants to indulge in metres and metres of positivity but, as we will soon see, they will soon be defeated by an obvious depression that will make his verses into splendid graveyards…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

21st May 2024

Martin Rossiter -  Vocals, Keyboards

Matt James - Drums

Kevin Miles - Bass

Steve Mason - Guitars

Phil Vinal - Producer