My Review: The Slow Readers Club - Out Of A Dream

 The Slow Readers Club - Out Of A Dream

Hands, traces, smells, projections (some direct, others inclined to a diplomatic form of relative exhibitionism), bring the whole thing into focus like the end point of an exploding excrescence: there are facts that cannot be told, the world is not ready, and a dutiful silence kneels before a technology that has rapidly become the centre of gravity of an advancing void.

Could Mancunians The Slow Readers Club shy away from exposing the pain, the anger, the worry, from describing the world gone mad?

Certainly not, and in these ten new songs they have not neglected to employ the dripping ribaldry of blood and shavings, with a work that recaptures the band's old ardour, displacing after their album two years ago that had sown smiles, signs of peace, and exposed the Manchester band to a political stance as well.

We find ourselves with the individual at the centre, in an emotional peristalsis that does not disguise itself as a discard, keeping, unfortunately, the whole in the body of a mind without reference points. They take away space for escape and invite us to introspection, to consider optics that we thought were no longer necessary.

The music nods, borrows vessels, streams, shreds of light and sows aching petals, with a more moderate grafting of electronics and yet finding the right compromise to allow the sound streams to clarify Aaron Starkie's lyrics, here, perhaps more than ever, the album's true protagonist. It is a moderate dance, with two tracks that shake your legs, although overall you get the feeling that you are doing it with a sword of Damocles over your head, which makes it all dangerous. There is no joy in these verses, not even in the notes, bestowing a miracle of clear and pure sincerity, no falsehood, as the Manchester band has put aside what is now meaningless: no deception certainly permeates these compositions, which instead stipulate a contract with a strategic path in time. 

They advance, they retreat, but never anchor the how. This makes the work a constant operation against pretence: fans will be shocked, probably not happy as it lacks those fast songs that enter the heart. Everything is slower, deeper, more mature, and it is an essential form of redemption against those who pretend compared to those who really love.

Songs like night beacons, with the waters of the ocean of living trembling, cold and disconsolate: there is a world that takes space (the technological one to be clear) that worries because it knows how to obscure relationships, values and time.

Conflict becomes a cry, marginalisation, havoc, and music the binoculars of a shaky conscience, while people all around dance without conscience.

Readers are even slower, bent, with Aaron's haggard eyes, intent on describing in depth what is prone to change a history that has decided to change forever. For the worse.

Songs witnesses.

Songs rudders of a dazed advance.

Songs like mute slaps, without bruises on the skin.

The attention to moderating the aspect of dragging the crowd into the place of sharing is evident: the notes are heaps of fog, just as the words are cobblestones that take away the security of balance, which is increasingly precarious. 

An oppressive silence becomes necessary, with solitude as an inner hermitage, remaining anchored in a sociality as the bulwark of a new contradiction. Lies, broken promises, and love inclined to dissolve are the main themes of a concept album that is visual, cryptic, but so fascinating as to fully stun. 

To succeed in conveying all this in notes, chords, solos, the main dynamic emphasises a shrewdness never noticed in previous works: sound planes as if planed by a mature sense of order, in a mantra less exhibited, but developed through arrangements laden with poetry and an abundant quota of a new poison, created by the band itself

The bewilderment generates fear, the fear that comes out of the tail end of this fake evolution ends up in the grooves of a vinyl that sounds like a stone in search of its proper emptiness, but the will not to bow down wins out, in the search for a dialogue without grip but preferable in any case.

Aaron's voice finds the updrafts that lead him to expose his weeping vocal chords, in an obscene path of enrichment and stun, with the falsetto taking up even more space, with words that seem to be paralysing but never the result of a flash or a mistake. Rather: he has found a way to elevate his already rich writing ability and, in doing so, here are diminished slogans and catchphrases, to instead place his visions in a sensible, fluid, amniotic, introverted circuit, but always near a lamppost with sad, worried eyes.

The climax is softened (only apparently) by a couple of ballads, which, however, eventually become a via crucis in which the thorns seem to enter perfectly into the flesh of thoughts that struggle to remain strong...

There is a form of discipline, of constructing a sense that manages to galvanise Old Scribe, and you can sense it when the band considers self-quotation in the scorching Loved You Then, which, with Dear Silence, is the only episode in which the fast rhythm carries everything away, as if the words were less blunt.

Perimeterless, introverted, caducous, almost genuflected, this manifest intention to employ the art of confrontation that does not fear confrontation becomes the only hook, the only way to bring the listeners into a necessary embrace, especially in front of the devastating Our Song Is Sung, probably the most intimate moment in the entire catalogue of the Mancunian line-up. 

The voice, the arpeggio, the kneeling synth become an operative poem that shakes, tears down and shreds every possible resistance...

One becomes an orphan, a prisoner, a doll, a deactivated transistor, and thus free to think, to bring oneself back to reason: ten slaps that raise pride and scatter it in the dark zones of a struggling pain.

A record of these times, seen, described and brought to the ceiling, to illuminate the steps...

There is a thorn that must be removed and a new one inserted: probably this soundtrack will lead you to choose, to deny yourself complicity with stupidity and there will be nothing but an ocean with the intention of becoming a virgin again...

Song by Song

1 - Technofear

'You're talking too loud I can't get no sleep'

War changes faces, strategies, enters the corridors of unconsciousness and shoots, straight to the heart. The Readers find the synthesis, not only photographing but insisting, throwing words into the rhythm that confuse, thinning the truth in a song that explodes its strength in the refrain like an inevitable fragility, also thanks to the chorus that weighs it down without giving in...

The guitars bend, leave the synth phrasing, but remain sewn with their post-punk ardour to seal an absolute faith...

2 - Animals

'And so we shelter here that life outside has got so hard'

Echoes of Abba, of Blur, of OMD open the stage to host a syncopated theatre where passionate love seeks a spell. And here is the couple in the light of modernity generating fragility while, for its part, the music tries to translate it all by varying little and leaving Kurtis' guitar to remind us of The Edge in the days of Boy. Everything is fixative and the chords try to find the shortest way not to hurt themselves, and succeed in doing so...

3 - Little White Lies

'Our day is coming, our love is built to last'

Surprising, parental, bewitching, slow, far from the cliché of the four's writing, it demonstrates how to insist on a concept while minimising any suggestion that differentiating oneself is an obligatory choice. Thus we hear a poem that trembles as a loop rummages, the simple drumming lulls the steps and the bass protects, with Aaron bringing his voice a stone's throw from paradise, which awaits the couple described in the lyrics...

4 - Dear Silence

'Stepping outside the rubicon no rules apply no law this is fight you fight alone no turning back no more'

What is invoked has the awareness of a developing power: here silence advances as hypothesis, as glue, as incipit, as benefit, as a desperate place to visit. The rhythm is assertive, the rhymes dazzle, the meaning stuns and we travel into the early nineties with the sound of Kraftwerk's train.  Energetic, this gem can offer miles of escapism like a slingshot that can quickly return to the sonic home of the early days of this formation. The 'old' Readers show up here and it's a joy for those who can't love their evolution...

5 - Know This I Am

'Know this I am, know this I am, I am the face in the mirror - haunted'

A guitar harps in the wind, mist descends into Aaron's sad strings, chills rush to compact and, as the singer takes up the high register, you find yourself being fragile puppies, with death knocking in the back of your mind...

Dramatic, it reveals a totally tormented caveman, becoming a murderer lulling blissfully in the restrained explosion of a guitar that sounds like a fistful of salt, while the drumming seems to be a message from Jupiter...

Love, faith, hope mutate to be bullets that can create an unexpected conflict.

Devastating...

6 - Boys So Blue

'Fake a laugh, paint a smile, boys in pain all the while, all an act, oh what can I do'

Scars: how to put them to music?

Alcohol, drugs, sex, take hold of disrespect and find themselves protagonists in this track which, like an unexpected overdose, seeks the applause of death.

The keyboard at the beginning takes us back to Cavalcade, and then the semi-acoustic guitar becomes the absolute chant that paralyses even before Aaron's actual singing. It is an urban, sullen track that tries to be kind to ugliness, winning hands down...

7 - Pirouette

'I've grown accustomed to thе life I was given, while taking hits from all sidеs'

Everest decides to take two steps, or rather, to dance, to bring a kiss to the temples of a dancer travelling in the vision of an unrealised arrival. Hope persists in the future while a gloomy cloud brings the song to a refrain that struggles to arrive, consciously, by choice, to relieve only at the right moment an evident tension.

Readers' electronics here are fully willing to take Kurtis' soaring guitar riffs and bring Everest to a happy rest...

8 - Puppets

'We could have been anything but world revolves around greed again'

Ten years after Cavalcade that brought them into the alternative circuits, the third track seems to reiterate the concept that the eighties are the years in which one can plunder, to which one can turn one's eyes. It is a very sad, intriguing moment, with a sound carpet on which to spread greed and hatred with the only real guitar solo on the whole album, in which the heart decides to go into apnoea…

9 - Loved You Then

'Loved you then but I hate you now does me good just to say it out loud'

The train arrives, guitars and synths in cahoots, sharp, piercing notes, the polar cold entering the lyrics, in a world dominated by greed the band decides to explore the recent past and change the rules of the game, even though they have the same cards. 

Fast, punchy and mantric...

10 - Our Song Is Sung

'Searching my mind to find something to say get out of here'

And that's the end. Which remains, relentless, in pastel-tinged verses and notes, to generate tears and mudslides, with death opening its arms, smiling, while the singing sweeps away the dreams, in a synth that surrounds the pain with feathery nights, and the guitar plumbs its claws gently, in a poignant and paralysing hiatus. The Readers' saddest song ever closes this album, and one struggles to imagine a track that condenses the truth with greater skill than this one. And the falsetto, shuddering snare that sweeps away the light makes this close a blessing.

And we go back to listening to the first one to fool ourselves, while the truth the four of them have etched it forever...

Alex Dematteis 

Musicshockworld 

Salford

6-3-2025

La mia Recensione: Peter Yates - You Never Know What You Might Find

 

Peter Yates - You Never Know What You Might Find

Come uno shock che rivitalizza i circuiti della comprensione, eccoci in un impianto crepuscolare ma colmo di pulsioni (lente), per precisare la descrizione e l’assorbimento di tutto ciò che la natura genera, rivelato attraverso balsami sonori che circondano e disarmano l’indifferenza.

Vogliamo chiamarla musica? Mi parrebbe riduttivo.

Siamo davanti a una forma di disciplina che educa allo sfoltimento  e all’abbandono di cliché di ascolto che mal si coniugano a quello che questa arte dovrebbe difendere: l’unicità, la serietà, l’intenzione di creare germogli mentali che aprano i pori dei pensieri.

Torna Peter Yates ed è la conferma di un livello di classe difficilmente raggiungibile dai musicisti e autori attuali. Ribadisce la capacità di usare filtri, di setacciare l’inutile e di abbandonarlo, di approcciarsi, divinamente, allo studio del suono, mostrando dilatazioni, echi leggeri ma perfettamente rotondi, riverberi che disinfettano il frastuono e lo rendono ubbidiente a questa analisi che si completa diventando un’operazione chirurgica perfettamente riuscita.

Lo sguardo prende slancio dalla psichedelia rarefatta, come un sospiro che indaga e riflette e porta il contenuto nella clessidra del tempo, accostandosi a una ambient music vogliosa di contenersi, di non essere un calice di spumante italiano bensì ancora un semplice ma preziosissimo grappolo, quasi insicuro ma certamente rispettoso delle grandezze a cui si interessa. Peter rallenta, si china, si ostina, si mimetizza e lascia antichi momenti gloriosi in un garage abbandonato: come musicista solista è nettamente migliore, più capace di esprimere concetti e di calibrare un genio mai riconosciuto prima. L’intensità che raggiunge non abbisogna della seppur notevole grandezza di quella band che il Vecchio Scriba non smetterà mai di amare.

Ma qui ci ritroviamo in un incantesimo, dove delicatezza, purezza, candore e rispetto conducono questi quattordici brani all’interno di un viale che pare abbracciare gli alberi, le case, i moti di una esistenza confusa. Le idee, qui, invece, sono chiare e si sente il profumo della modestia che non celebra ma conserva il proprio percorso di crescita interiore. 

Musica, allora, che è un flusso cinematico, sensoriale, solare nella schiuma di una luce ancora dormiente: ci pensano apparenti arpeggi con la forma di deliziose ninnananne e archi in sinuosi dipinti per sorvolare la zona del vivere e renderla una saggia estasi primaverile…

Parrebbe di sentir camuffato il blues epico di antiche traiettorie per trasformarsi in una messa che ancora deve decidere se essere laica o sacra. Ma si respira spiritualità, devozione al silenzio con le note che divengono ramificazioni consapevoli, avendo la dote di ispessire la consapevolezza delle cose terrene.

Gira attorno a piccole sequenze di accordi, cercando l’epicentro, per trasportarlo poi su un terrazzo, dove può essere notato dalle anime in volo.

Non è un album per tutti ed è una grande gioia: a volte può essere una grande vittoria non far parte di una massa, specie quella attuale che ignora e non riconosce la purezza di quest’arte sempre più violentata e sicuramente usata in malo modo. Yates entra nei suoni di una cucina, nell’ingresso di casa, adopera piccoli stratagemmi per ipnotizzare, come una seduta nella quale non è la catarsi l’obiettivo. Lo è il sentire sconfitta la solitudine in quanto queste composizioni allertano i sensi e li sparpagliano in un giorno in cui il tempo speso ad ascoltare questo lavoro rappresenta la prima forma di orgoglio, sapendo che i racconti e le fiabe a volte sono l’antipasto di una realtà che osa assomigliare a essi.

Un disco solo apparentemente strumentale perché, se si presta attenzione, queste composizioni traducono continuamente il flusso di pensieri che alberga nella mente di questo incredibile artista: saper cogliere gli aspetti diversi del linguaggio, partendo dal silenzio per finire alla voce degli strumenti, diventa per davvero il bellissimo esempio di una nuova comunicazione.

Quando la preziosa amicizia che lo lega a Jo Beth Young decide di mostrarsi (Beside), allora ci ritroviamo con voci diverse affiancate, in una danza medievale con flussi elettronici annessi, tra patterns, chitarre sognanti e stridori che aspettano la voce della cantante, qui alle prese con un testo scritto di suo pugno e dipinto sulle basi di questa clessidra temporale che conduce il suo registro ad alzarsi in volo, per disperdersi tra le nuvole…

In tutto l’album convivono inclinazioni morali, diamanti tenuti nascosti da chilometrici giochi di chitarre in grado di semplificare il rapporto con le idee: un cammino breve che però conduce lontano, negando la forma canzone per usare, invece, una modalità che pratica la retorica, la perlustrazione e l’abbandono di quello che seduce l’artista inglese. Il risultato è il fumo caldo di una fascina di legno che non brucia ma scalda con rispetto, distinguendosi, rifugiandosi in un microcosmo di folletti e spiriti che trovano l’amaca perfetta su cui riprendersi dalle proprie fatiche, per un insieme adulto, altamente professionale e sicuramente terapeutico…

Disco del mese di Marzo 2025.

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

5 Marzo 2025

https://peteryates.bandcamp.com/album/you-never-know-what-you-might-find

My Review: Peter Yates - You Never Know What You Might Find

 

Peter Yates - You Never Know What You Might Find

Like a shock that revitalises the circuits of understanding, here we are in a crepuscular full of (slow) pulses, to specify the description and absorption of all that nature generates, revealed through sonic balms that surround and disarm indifference.

Shall we call it music? It would seem reductive.

We are in front of a form of discipline that educates in the shedding and abandonment of listening clichés that are ill-suited to what this art should defend: uniqueness, seriousness, the intention to create mental shoots that open the pores of thoughts.

Peter Yates returns, and it is the confirmation of a level of class that is difficult for current musicians and authors to reach. It reaffirms the ability to use filters, to sift out the useless and abandon it, to approach, divinely, the study of sound, showing dilations, light but perfectly rounded echoes, reverberations that disinfect the din and make it obedient to this analysis that is completed by becoming a perfectly successful surgical operation.

The gaze takes off from the rarefied psychedelia, like a sigh that investigates and reflects and brings the contents into the hourglass of time, approaching an ambient music that wants to contain itself, to not be a goblet of Italian sparkling wine but still a simple but very precious bunch, almost insecure but certainly respectful of the greatness it is interested in. Peter slows down, bends over, blends in and leaves old glorious moments in an abandoned garage: as a solo musician, he is clearly better, more capable of expressing concepts and calibrating a genius that has never been recognised before. The intensity he achieves has no need of the albeit remarkable greatness of that band that Old Scribe will never cease to love.

But here we find ourselves in a spell, where delicacy, purity, candour and respect lead these fourteen tracks down an avenue that seems to embrace the trees, the houses, the motions of a confused existence. The ideas here are clear and one can smell the scent of modesty that does not celebrate but preserves one's inner growth. 

Music, then, that is a kinematic, sensorial, solar flow in the foam of a still dormant light: it takes apparent arpeggios in the form of delightful lullabies and strings in sinuous paintings to fly over the zone of living and make it a wise springtime ecstasy...

We seem to hear the epic blues of ancient trajectories disguised as a mass that has yet to decide whether to be secular or sacred. But one breathes spirituality, devotion to silence with notes that become conscious ramifications, having the gift of thickening the awareness of earthly things.

It revolves around small chord sequences, searching for the epicentre, then transporting it to a terrace, where it can be noticed by souls in flight.

It is not an album for everyone and it is a great joy: sometimes it can be a great victory not to be part of a mass, especially the current one that ignores and does not recognise the purity of this increasingly raped and certainly misused art. Yates enters into the sounds of a kitchen, into the entrance of a house, he uses small stratagems to hypnotise, like a session in which catharsis is not the objective. It is the feeling of defeated loneliness as these compositions alert the senses and scatter them on a day when time spent listening to this work is the first form of pride, knowing that tales and fairy tales are sometimes the appetiser of a reality that dares to resemble them.

An album that is only apparently instrumental because, if you pay attention, these compositions continually translate the flow of thoughts that dwells in the mind of this incredible artist: being able to grasp the different aspects of language, starting from silence and ending with the voice of the instruments, becomes a beautiful example of a new communication.

When the precious friendship that binds him to Jo Beth Young decides to show itself (Beside), then we find ourselves with different voices side by side, in a medieval dance with annexed electronic flows, between patterns, dreamy guitars and screeching that await the voice of the singer, here struggling with a text written in her own hand and painted on the basis of this hourglass of time that leads her register to rise in flight, to disperse in the clouds...

Throughout the album, moral inclinations coexist, diamonds kept hidden by kilometre-long guitar plays that simplify the relationship with ideas: a short path that, however, leads far away, denying the song form to use, instead, a modality that practices rhetoric, scouring and abandonment of what seduces the English artist. The result is the warm smoke of a bundle of wood that does not burn but warms with respect, standing out, taking refuge in a microcosm of goblins and spirits who find the perfect hammock in which to recover from their labours, deep, highly professional and certainly therapeutic ensemble…

Album of the month

March 2025

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

5 Marzo 2025

https://peteryates.bandcamp.com/album/you-never-know-what-you-might-find

My Review: Leonard Cohen - Various Positions

 

Leonard Cohen - Various Positions

The scene depicts Leonard Cohen in the Laurentides, smoking a cigarette. The atmosphere descends from the walls, burying the notes of an album that has undergone various transformations. This reflects the mechanics of the Canadian artist, who, in his first fifty years, has not sought to revive memories but has instead established new challenges to define.

Tragedy strikes with new attire, inspiring a different, eloquent song. This song expresses thoughts in the twilight of time, never devoid of panic, yet capable of sowing it.

The heart shatters: they are stories that dim the light, and where his attempt was evident in presenting atypical rainbows. Despite this, Leonard smiles, puffs, smokes, and sings even more closed, clutching his shoulders.

The title and these words leave the imagination with a bittersweet joy that traverses the absolute: an artistic process that aimed to disrupt stories without a microphone, let alone a megaphone. Intuition emerges as the adversary of escapism, entangled in a labyrinth of mental cables that reside in melancholic rivers in the stormy landscape where the singer requires a guide, a deity, and a cast of characters to navigate the treacherous path of sin.

Cheerfulness evokes romance and music, the true protagonist of this work, arriving like an ecstasy that precisely understands the context. The stave assumes the role of a ferryman, introducing new styles, accompanied by an almost silent orchestra that subtly suggests sounds and colours to tales that have never existed before.

The courage not to abandon his acoustic guitar alone demonstrates that the past was not a lifeline but a piggy bank to be broken.

The realism, the darkness, and the brilliance of the breakup transform into the sighs of these arrangements, of these soulful choruses, where country music slows down and psychedelia immerses itself in the river of love. This explains these compositions that blend the authenticity of an atypical complex discourse, out of context for the 1984 year that was consecrated to be the decisive year for the demolition of slowness and words that, with morality at hand, could slow down the excess in consumption.

A horseman emphasising slow motion is painful and indigestible.

However, Cohen’s creations are always meticulously crafted. It is quite easy to avoid his dishes. And that is precisely what transpired in the lead-up to the release of this nocturnal masterpiece.

Piano, strings, double bass, electric guitar, and a female vocal line create a dark, radiant light that illuminates Cohen’s soul, which undergoes an epochal and unforeseen transformation. An otherworldly presence takes possession of his writing: his hatching becomes more pronounced, painful, yet simultaneously he experiences comprehensible dichotomies that breathe life into the artistic structure.

Darkness, his constant companion, becomes a dancing spirit, an unusual waltz, where the rhythm reveals the pretext for a deception that manifests in at least three tracks, for a mode of expression that embraces gospel and blues without revealing the stylistic characteristics.

The emphasis lies in the singing, which is sunnier, with the voice’s medium-high register, and the notion that those words already held a profound emotional resonance and did not require repetition in that baritone tone that, while charming one generation, risked alienating others.

A compromise? Perhaps, but ultimately, these chords, imbued with tobacco, alcohol, and drama, harmoniously aligned by an almost misplaced treble clef, confer upon the album a sanctity that is scarcely discernible after the initial listening.

As always, the rhyme scheme remains unpredictable, drained but capable of providing unexpected comfort by delivering unexpected jabs and punches that, unfortunately for the listener, they find themselves subjected to.

Reflection on the human condition remains the central theme of his writings, yet it is evident how he avoids direct violent confrontations, opting instead for a prairie where he can introduce unexpected elements to bewilder and confuse everyone in a row of drunken grass.

The depth of his work transcends the philosophical realm, as exemplified in the first track where even the atrocities committed in Nazi concentration camps find a fleeting semblance of happiness. Moreover, it is striking when discontent is entrusted to the refrain rather than the strophes in a story, a substantial reversal that demonstrates a complete disregard for contemporary song forms. The country and western influences, while not exclusive, underscore the versatility of his music and highlight the need for its range of moral, technical, and musical tools to be updated, not only stylistically.

The reverberation of his music is numerous, perhaps excessive, and this very reason makes the listening experience pleasant, an oxymoron that enriches the soul while simultaneously impoverishing the habit. Leonard intrigues, stings, emphasises, but never invokes alliances. He journeys on the ship of his thoughts with a voyage that will find greater precision in subsequent albums. A timeless work since its publication, it serves as a watershed, a traffic light, and a medieval shot that sharpens attention and perplexity. It offers no comfort zone, as it is not possible to discuss the author who most attempted to shatter conventional notions by disguising them in silk.

One is moved and puzzled by the sounds, the styles that are never truly heterogeneous but acknowledge that in a homosexual individual, there is never one branch superior to another.

Songs like trembling columns, fir-trees, sacks of rubbish to be thrown into the square of our madness, a cumbersome incumbency where beauty and love challenge ugliness and hatred in a circuit where understanding (ours) is relegated to the periphery.

In this context, compared to Bob Dylan, Leonard demonstrates a clear superiority: verse is not presented as a display of quality, but rather as the necessity that through artifice one can descend into consciousness.

Intimacy is intertwined with the concept of immortality, manifesting in a silent dance that does not perspire or drip onto the legs, but instead produces toxic, viscous substances that permeate the corridors of the mind. Desire and struggle find themselves far from a conventional setting, such as a bench, to engage in discussions, while the dynamics of relationships engender infections and discouragements.

For Cohen, the higher power is not a divine entity, and guilt intersects with those who seek solace but find it elusive, leading to despair.

Death returns, somber and gradual, preparing for the inevitable transition to the afterlife with a distinctive approach that skillfully presents the inevitable without making it overly burdensome.

The complexity of emotions is seamlessly integrated into the music, characterised by its slow tempo and violent intensity, which effectively restrains and encapsulates both the false and the true within a game that Leonard masterfully dominates, exhibiting a consistent pattern that deviates significantly from his previous albums.

He presents dilemmas, akin to fireworks illuminating the curtains of an exploration that is perpetually inflamed by icy gems that, as they acquire a reddish hue, centre the primary focus of his exposition.

Conflict arises from distant corners that refuse to seek proximity, leading Cohen to adopt a strategy of encompassing his stories within a limited timeframe of a few years.

This approach proves to be remarkably effective.

He meticulously safeguards his verses, entrusting them to strings and muffled drums, as well as unconsciously graceful brush strokes. However, the final result emerges as a splendid emotional funeral.

It offers comfort, compassion, and caresses reminiscent of eighteenth-century arpeggios and frescos that evoke the ambiance of Italian quarters in the nineteenth century. Another enigma, another St. Patrick’s well that, as it unfolds, presents a complex puzzle that challenges comprehension. Before its prolific generosity, one experiences a sense of poverty, akin to losing one’s wealth, for a tragedy that borders on the comedic.

“The Hills to Rejoice In”: One could commence from this point to establish, in the loss of meaning, a departure from the desire to allow one’s cultural baggage access to their own. Cohen divides, sifts, distances, and does so with his voice as a steadfast oak tree, where, gradually, he leads us down to tear us down with his beauty…

Old age reveals its teeth through behavioural conflicts that make the notes harsh, in an ambiguous lightness that stuns, captivates but simultaneously disconcerts and directs our thoughts towards the places of inevitable concealment.

The musicians are disciplined, attentive, akin to an orchestra that discerns orders, scores, and dry gestures in the maestro: no escapes permitted, just as no smears and a sacred sense of performance that transforms the disc into a sonic landscape traversing the tempest of time. It is inconsequential whether the subject matter is topical, past, or future: everything becomes a vibrant energy where his words and notes are molecules that leave you paralysed and sweet dreams, bordering on a perilous allure.

Leonard Cohen entrusts the wind with the task of bringing all complexity to take a shower and chooses pink drops, a whiskey brand, and considerable strength in verses that in 1984 appeared to originate from Atlantis, Babylon (as mentioned in the album’s opening song), embarking on a journey that does not consume but, in fact, amplifies the entire experience in a dramatic sense towards the exploration of truth.

The notes are embedded in the essence of these lampposts, and the moral becomes an atypical yet fundamental blues, which succeeds in making time the silent observer that allows entry due to its poetic resonance that akin to a muse captivates.

However, its wisdom becomes unfulfilled if the listener fails to comprehend that, precisely because we are not confronted with a masterpiece, this artistic endeavour demonstrates greater adherence to the truth: study and introspection become indispensable, to complete that profound sense of shock that this work is capable of generating…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

23 February 2025

https://open.spotify.com/intl-it/album/6I58qJMqZHhb8jtNT3CuJB?si=BSZi-tlSQIKDKB8ZRpnePQ