My Review: Federale - Reverb & Seduction

 Federal - Reverb & Seduction

In a world of shouts, more or less noisy, and falsehoods, being inside a mysterious reverb and a powerful seduction is already a pass for dreams that can sneak into reality. Author of this miracle is the line-up from Portland, Oregon, capital of Multnomah County, always capable of churning out musical frescoes and making art a reservoir for the United States.

Now in its sixth studio album, it has succeeded in transforming talent and dedication into a sonic and lyrical tale that encircles its seventeen years of activity, preserving its petroleum soul to pour its contents into ten powerful tracks, between behavioural and philosophical decadence, in a sensorial interlocking that unites the human universe with that of nature, sublimating everything with petals of poison tamed with wisdom to cleanse the waste and purify the smears. 

In a stylistic mixture that encompasses musical genres branded with skilful force and delicacy (when necessary), here comes the veil of a rock psychedelia capable of laying its claws on the evocation of the spaghetti western world, where  Italian cinema was able to attract artists in an act where painting clouds and wind surpassed the crazy inspiration of Buñuel's films, with its art representing the best Spanish surrealist version.

Collin Hegna's band (no objection to his role as bassist in the legendary The Brian Jonestown Massacre, but with this project all his magnificence reveals an authority and skill that always nails the listener, without smearing) writes a careful, meticulous hieroglyphic, with occasional echoes (and not reverberations...) of dark country/gothic Americana/folk noir atoms that align resoundingly with what seem to be the 'official musical styles'.

Ten earth-cloud lightnings that illuminate the vault of our thoughts, with humour variations that brighten the breadth of their artistic range.

A tension tamed in sumptuous, effervescent arrangements, to walk the paths of stories and images that stick to the skin and nourish the adipose layer and let it all flow through the veins.

A rainbow within a winter storm: such words would suffice to frame this sublime work, but it should be pointed out that Reverb & Seduction is also a drawing full of shyness within the expressive circuits of adults who seem to play with notes as children would, leaving naivety to appear in an elegant way and then transform itself into a conscious act.

The courageous desire to give the compositions a structure from classical music often appears, although it does not deny the desire for the song form, legitimising the need to make these stylistic movements richer and more varied. A soundtrack that makes a pact with the images: not to be oblivious to the messages that the words contain, in order to make the whole a soft statue that looks proudly at the listeners. 

This crowded line-up visits the areas it knows very well, leading everything towards mental meadows and instinctive paths to join the magnetic plane of magic that at a certain point creates paths that cannot be deciphered, but that can be intuited: an anarchic form that takes no prisoners and makes listening a place full of benefits.  As in an experience full of drunken trajectories, so do these compositions move: they find no detritus and sow none, respecting the ecosystem, but they know how to zigzag between possibilities, making their virtues fertile, writing a set of tracks that legitimise the cost of purchase, offering a sensory storm that expands song after song, listening after listening, in an outpouring of senses freed from heavy chains. 

One suffers with empathy, one dresses the mood with reason and sharing, one takes shots that decide one's destiny: one of the most beautiful records of the last few years is waiting to be squeezed, spilled over in repeated plays.

There is certainly no shortage of need for gauze: streams of sadness occasionally flood this pentagram, but they make it credible and truthful...

Let us place our attention on the ten tracks and make our approach to the album an act of dutiful attention...

Song by Song

1 - Advice From A Stranger

A roar coats the first notes in gentle feedback, and then it's dirty blues dressed in a magnetic psychedelia that offers a dark pop interlude with the refrain. 

Deadly.

2 - Heaven Forgive Me

The apotheosis of spaghetti western suggestions, swollen with noir folk, gives the track the role of a representative flag waving over the history of American music. Guitars as vibrant pulp, a minimalist solo to indicate the trajectory of the melody and then the singing: how to mix Morricone, the Pixies, Mark Lanegan and Sophia in a dancing vessel full of rust...

Poignant.

3 - I'll Never Forget

The rhythm, the form, the intensity differ from the previous two songs and we find ourselves in a churchyard where memory and attention are celebrated, with the acoustic and electric guitar pairing setting the stage for a vocal that smells of epicness. Sadness is conceived as a great opportunity for personal renewal during a powerful guitar solo full of acid and sweat.

Calamitous.

4 - The Gallow Gate 

Drums, then a delightful rhythmic slide, with piano chimes and the folk moving to the desert, never failing to water the sky with continuous melodic openings.

Epic.

5 - Hope Don't You Haunt Me

16 Horsepower and David Eugene Edwards take a bow: the desert spirits seem to come out of this track that sums up the identity of American alternative when it decides to conjugate itself to the gothic on the surface.

Sensual.

6 - Dark Waters

One runs flying in the dark, with a tension that paralyses and leaves smiling bows although tears are the first to come out of one's eyes. Sacred, austere, powerful, it goes the distance to remind us what The Mission would sound like if they lived in the States.

Imposing.

7 - No Strangers 

An apparent gentleness, daughter of The Church and Echo & The Bunnymen, enters the album, in the path of a compass that encompasses all possibilities, to exhibit a tale in which the citizens of a city notice a stranger coming through: and Sunday has a scent at once heavenly and suspicious.

Airy. 

8 - The Worst Thing You Ever Did Was Loving You

With a country feel and more indie rhythms, this track is a perfect glue to the previous one, and Megan Diana's voice sounds like a soulful smile.

Intimist.

9 - Home

Between Portland and Dublin, the musical journey includes revisiting pop codes that can make folk a haven of heaven...

Refreshing.

10 - Revolver Revolver

The album closes with an instrumental song, daughter of swamps that dare to run, with Morricone conducting from the sky, the Pixies pawing and the Portland band doing their utmost to write a farewell that lifts the skin and takes you back to the seventies, to write about nostalgia and fears without uttering a word...

Perfect.

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

8th July 2024

https://federalemusic.bandcamp.com/album/reverb-seduction

Jealous Butcher Records