St. Jimi Sebastian Cricket Club - Into Your Heartbeat
A storm, when it can be gentle, accommodating, peaceful, seems not credible and is defined in other ways. It happens the same in music, more rarely, because it is considered an event that at least attracts attention.
The Swedish band, of which the Old Scribe had told you about a single in April, returns to specify the incredible trails, moral, physical, attitudinal, of a work that leads to an intimate propensity for recollection, a cultural recreation, for a series of archaeological reunions that live between these grooves, in an oscillation between sweetness, melancholy, research, taste in subtle social criticism, in stories that show the range of a writing capable of visiting reality.
The range of style and musical genres present is clear, but how much ability to make it all seem like an evening among friends amidst tears, bottles, laughter, tears and many questions is perhaps less so, for those who do not descend into the perfumed clods of their class.
The heartbeat in the title of this gem is nothing other than life presenting itself, with its limpid willingness to be present at an undeniable possibility.
Thus we have compositions that build a hemisphere, with the elegance of a score skilful in crossing an ancient sense and spirit with modernity, on a constant pilgrimage in the moderation of tones and words. There is no shouting, no insults, and even less accusations: the band is polite, patient, working hard to come to grips with the acute desire to make a record that teaches one to document oneself, to absent oneself from judgement.
The references and proximities to a long line of bands active especially in the 1990s are numerous, but one always has the pleasant feeling that St. Jimi Sebastian Cricket Club comes from that very period, having had the foresight to hide.
There are uniquenesses, openings that the formations of those years did not have, a sacredness that reaches even to cabaret, theatre, cinema, with an incredible voracity on the meticulousness of the phrasing, on the succession of the arrangements, on the pulses as propulsors of an energy that must be incorporated into a project. Ten tracks like a walk in the natural park of existence, with faces and vicissitudes that find the oil of wisdom to make everything soft and functional.
Remarkable is the fact that, although listening allows one to take these walks easily within oneself, one gets the impression of small torments, some fatigue, the search for a perfection that it was possible to achieve through all this. Everything works, moves and arrives in the confines of a tension that knows how to find poetic trees among the avenues of a writing that, through indie rock, the elegant side of pop rock, the stantuffs of cabaret that swallows folk in laughter, frees the Stockholm band from the anxiety of having to search for perfect music.
To them belongs the ability of an artistic expressiveness that is pleasant to take on stages, in the rooms of those people who decide to hold under their arms, like an unknown parchment, these five Nordic minstrels, imbued with almost medieval traits in the moments in which they make everyone aware (through deep lyrics and music like compasses to bring them properly to the hearts) of what is happening.
Prairies, buildings, factories, roads, flights, birds, shadows, sounds, diamonds, gunshots, trains, alcoholic forays into joy as well as sadness, make this work a wonderful wallet full of emotional coins
A continuous departure, from unawareness on the melodic train to arrival at an enormous force, which allows these agglomerates of notes to become sharable experiences, generating petals of curiosity and intoxication. In alternating slow and fast paces, it is clear how impact, impetuosity and thoughtfulness are definitely present in their brilliant and capable minds, to push the music into imaginary fields, close to our planets, our stars, our confusion-filled days. With the same direct action of the Pogues in making this choice of life a highway, the alcohol they drink is a liquid full of seasoned ferments, with time consolidating the validity of the choices, of the sounds, of these stanzas so conscious that they allow the refrains to be a dutiful consequence, where writing in minor sometimes seems in major. Voltages as dear to the Housemartins as to Belle & Sebastien, melodic intuitions close to Reading's Blueboys as to Birmingham's The Sea Urchins, and melancholic overtones very similar to Norway's Saybia, denote a remarkable, itinerant, lucid and well-equipped complexity. But over all wins a bridge that connects Sweden to England, made up of studies, explorations and the will to make emotional and mental fluidity the pretext for songs that can unite fantasies, tales and effervescent embassies like a shanghai (Mikado) in reverse, in which the one who falls and not the one who remains standing wins: another mammoth magic of this combo....
And an incredibly pleasant and heartbreaking fact is to feel wrapped in tears that seem to make us aware of everything around us.
Yes, without a doubt, this record must be known, used and transported everywhere, without hesitation...
Song by Song
1 - Stockholm Central Station
‘She's always been a rover, a panda scarred by the tides
hooked on a glistening dream, with one foot in the truth
if you do not like the silence, you know nothing at all’.
Freedom is a falling beam, when personal space is sought within a relationship. Here, what opens listening to this album reveals an excellent balance between recognising the value of the other and one's own needs. All this within an easygoing, light, sunny atmosphere, a low-hanging fruit from 1960s California with delightful choruses and countermelodies that connect perfectly between docile and more robust guitars.
2 - Soothing Nights
‘And our days, pass by like streams and waterfalls tranquil madness, and soothing nights
but some hours, they last forever, carved in stone, with your smile’.
From my review published in April:
‘There is a poem that flies through the air, it has no ink traces on its skin but vibrant notes on its back, in a contortion that sucks up the sky gracing, surprisingly, the bright trail of a sleepless night. A song that in its poignant monotony reveals streams of beautiful committees of sadness, with the intention of exploring celestial space contemplating a dying star. It does not need to vary, except in the rhythm that increases, with the entry of the drums and an increasingly enveloping atmosphere, to combine the lyrics with a set of sound clusters that, like a liquid chasm, compact the universe of feelings.’
3 - Until We Meet Again
‘So hold me, forever I can still hear the sound
the sound of laughter on a quiet night, I'll never
until we meet on your side, let it go’
From Mexico to the States, then back to Sweden, an indie rock sting with the idea of hugging mariachis and then leaving it all behind in an energetic ride in which the lyrics tackle important, painful, troublesome themes with great maturity, where in the end a fall is stopped by an embrace, for a repeated beginning, again and again...
4 - When you tremble
‘You might be scared, you might lose control
when you tremble, but from tonight you're not alone’.
Time as seen through a window leads to the intersection of sunshine and night, as do these notes that tackle fear with an effective melodic backbone, allowing the sweetness to play its part, with the vocal that aptly adopts an anger on a leash, and the chord distortions that, sifting through the alternative indie of the nineties, play with light and shadow, for a truly intense track...
5 - Lemonhead Cabaret
‘I'm standing in a hole, and have the longest road to walk’
Like the Smiths, the band is at ease between light, funky notes and dynamite lyrics. The result is a song that seems to come from Galway, on a free descent into English ballads, only to return to Sweden with a theatricality that makes the heavens open...
6 - Golden Parachuter
‘I can still hear the sound of my heartbeat and a drum
in the smell of mint where my promises are dead’.
With the beginning that brings us home to Arcade Fire, everything fades out and moves away from Canada and into the Swedish sky, with effervescent melodies and songs, in order to save a soul and play with the dynamite, sensual bass and guitars that know how to use glam rock tricks in a context however free of exaggeration...
7 - Westbourne Terrace
‘There's a million regrets and something holding up the door for me
there's a fly drifting away towards the crown of a maple tree’
Tears can fly as well as walk, and they manage to do so perfectly in this ballad that includes psychedelic pills, transporting us back to the 1970s, and in which the singing plays with the fierceness of the sound of the words, in a form that paralyses: a cloud covering the light serves all...
8 - Penguins of the Ghetto
‘I have something on my mind not yet a corpse, I'll come round it's a fine day, for a speech’
At the moment when alcohol delivers truth to dulled minds anything can happen: here is a rock foray with Irish petals by the bursting Sultans of Ping F.C. from the Veronica period.
The vocal is given the central role in the verse.
We then find canyon-like open guitars, stop and go drums, with a woman and her children as actors in the story of this man digging into his weakness...
9 - The 9.15 Train Departs at 9.15am
‘There's not much space on postcards so I better keep it brief
and make sure to leave it clear’
The Swedish band's joyful irony is impressive: just this song is enough to see the feat of a multifaceted marriage with different eras and modes, while everything flows with ease...
10 - Sailor Girl
‘12 months and a prayer, I fought all the shadows and doubt
never strayed from our doorstep, but we hold for another day’
The surprises continue at the last station: a melancholic folk fountain with vitaminic lashings of words that capture the power of a bad dream lead to an epic, stadium-like refrain that gives the single courage. And it is a joy coupled with sadness that slips into a nostalgic and truly incisive whistling to describe a harmonious leaning towards a very European storytelling, and then closes it all in a parting that makes us realise how the temporal space of this album is a fairy tale without an end...
Alex Dematteis
Musicshockworld
Salford
15th September 2024
https://open.spotify.com/album/2gfcDx5zj89C21EhC4EMa9?si=TwQCXficRXeJ3T4_6rsqTg
