To those times when you feel like you’ve heard a song for the first time, but when it turns out you’ve actually heard it before, here’s New Ears:Driving will often give insight into renewed vigor for something that was once somewhat to possibly meaningful. It happens with a personal regard to people, places, ideas and recommendations. It also happens with music. With this case in particular it happens within music with Jennifer Gentle.
An Italian band that I once reviewed after the release of their second full-length album, The Midnight Room, I’ve happened upon them once again and am smitten. It is absolutely lovely… for those that enjoy the oddness and twist a group of people will put on tradition. The Midnight Room feels like every new story you’ve ever heard that grabs at your imagination. That first story you heard as a kid that tied you to it’s hand and toted you around. The first campfire tale that gave you chills, or maybe that first film you saw that nearly literally brought you into another world.
That’s what it is for me. Another world. Every track off The Midnight Room is a brand new adventure into a strange new atmosphere, where your breath is light and your body is just slightly heavy. It’s a world of washed out gray scale, yet it’s as sharp as a The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. I hate to be one for self-reference (hey this is a column of second chances), but in my original review I mentioned relating to music by way of film. This is still, sadly or interestingly (you be the judge), the way I think. Which is why this album continues to at least grab at me.
The first few rotations left me with the impression that these Italians were a bit cheeky if not nerdy, bandying about a quick bit of quirk. I slung up a few words and laid them down with little mind paid after the review’s posting. Then I saw them play live about a month afterward. They were indeed quirky and nerdy and cheeky. They were also precise and technical and they didn’t seem right for this world. Finally, during my recent drive home they transformed the night into their own. I was transposing myself out onto the lamppost-tinted streets of downtown with Marcelo Mastroianni (hat and whip in tow). I was toasting to the grand lunacy of life. I was swimming in the Fontana di Trevi. I was an Italian living the post neo-realist life. I was possibly insane?
Or was it New Ears? Immediately I recounted my initial blasé reaction to the album and sent my inner monologue on an impressive tear down the road called Hypocrisy. Of course I like this album, what’s not there to like: melodic reference to one of cinema’s most influential periods and a blatant tip of the hat to Nina Rota, Fellini’s orchestral partner in crime. This album is the soundtrack to my sophomore year of college, yet it has no actual, literal connection to the time period. It just sounds like it.
So, as I find myself again ranting with absolutely no point or end in sight, the logical side of my brain will step in and put a period down. The main point to this session of New Ears is that Jennifer Gentle’s The Midnight Room is an album that may not at first be your cup of espresso, but if you’re at all a fan of the spirit and flavor of anything Frederico Fellini ever put his stamp on, that Nino Rota ever composed, maybe a bit of British Psychedilia and Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, then you’ll probably grow to love this album. And if it is that bit of mind-altering substance that spreads colorfully across your brain then you don’t need to be reading this.
2 comments:
Thanks for the tunes. I know what you mean.
man. you're an incredible writer.
thanks for letting us read.
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