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…
Alex Dematteis
Musicshockworld
Salford
11th May 2022
