My Review: Clone - CL.1

Clone - CL.1

Here is Brooklyn, alive and well, still pulsating, eager to change the world, to express its artistic and cultural needs.

We attend the debut album of the band called Clone and embrace it, given the quality that emerges from these ten compositions, so vibrant, ferocious, muscular, with a powerful determination to unite rock and post-punk, without lacking the reflection that the lyrics can deliver, like a sweet punch in the stomach. The quartet consists of two keyboards, two guitars, a bass guitar and drums.

The vocalist, LG Galleon, plays guitar and keyboard, as does Dominic Turi, for a work that in its entirety has great proximity to the career of Sonic Youth of the 1990s, and the intention to elaborate songs that know how to maintain high concentration and attention. Powerful guitars, rebellious vocals, a drummer who knows the way to transport us in decomposed, oblique dances, where the bass expresses the magic of precision and connections with less 'visible' genres, but which characterise the versatility of the entire American ensemble.  The lives of individuals here are put under pressure, analysed and criticised, with a constant push to find answers and offer sufficient energy for change, always in an urban hemisphere where negativity is easier to spot. A perfect amalgam, irritating in the positive sense, as the band knows how to stimulate reactions, offering an enormous service.

The melodic research, which is present, flanks the rhythmicity and the remarkable fact is the absence of a song that overpowers the others: an incredible continuity that makes it appear almost like a concept album. 

An evident bundle of spontaneity appears united with an equally evident projectuality: the impression is that of long hours in the rehearsal room warming the heart of each instinct and learning to govern it by giving it a task, for a final assimilation that is pleasantly disconcerting. We seem to see modernity disappear and return to the dreams, the rage, the rapacious instincts of a youth not intent on lazing around, but rather on warming up its engines and instilling an amphetamine petrol into its instruments.  Insides is the glaring example, the fuse that catches fire and leaves the skin as if tarred, in an inner rather than physical rush, like a tribal call that enters the streets of New York, to irritate and frighten.

Dividing Line is a resounding example of mental athleticism, a meteor that oxidises nerves through its psychedelic structure in a rhythm that galvanises with powerful guitar inserts.

Dazzle is the neurotic gem that expands its toxins in an imaginary association with Sonic Youth still endowed with the will to scratch the world.

With the final track Resurrection we witness a farewell that demonstrates all the processing work of the impetuses, orchestrated to generate inevitable chaos, in which the vocalist becomes a jackhammer with his "come back", surrounded by guitars thirsty for sadness.  But, if you can and want to, linger on the edelweiss of Redeemer, the episode in which everything seems to camouflage the previous episodes, only to represent them at their best when the drums start beating and the singing seems to be a polite scream with the task of representing suffering, yet not failing to visit the dream. An amazing moment that will surely bring back your memory of the American alternative rock epic of the entire nineties.

A killer, essential and addictive album that would do well to stir the dull and surrendered minds...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

20 Giugno 2024

https://clonebk.bandcamp.com/album/cl-1

 Clone - CL.1