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It continues the
Italian way to the wise rock, so touchy, soft and a bit homesick, sweetly
gothic, even hypnotic. And it continues well, with the second work of
Klimt 1918, after the already more than surprising debut "Undressed
Momento" in 2003. If in the previous album it was missing something
indefinable in the formula of the foursome from Rome to reach a
distinctive level of personality and intensity, here they press the pedal
on the (new)wave guitars and on the made in England urgency. The sound
acquires character and biting thanks to its immediate straight force: we're
hit by the hymns like "They were wed by the sea" (which avails of the
Brit-rock energy and the elegy-like prog openings) and "Snow of '85" (with
a harder rhythm and a more dramatic Marco Soellner), astonishes for how
pathos and emotional release follow the one another, of how a minimum but
unceasing tension leaves room to the absolution of feelings, to the viatic
of the heart and commotion. This sense of forlornness and toil is
counterbalanced by a more dreamy and poetic dimension, rich of involving
fogs, as in "Dopoguerra" (among shoegaze reflections, a floating bass and
the minimal psychedelic scores middle way between My Bloody Valentine and
Jesus and Mary Chain), "Rachel" (post-modern for definition, solemn and
sacred in its reverberations, guitars filled as of Interpol memories) and
"Lomo" (with a beating crescendo and some stratums over stratums à la
Katatonia). The album feeds on this alternance of tunes, with "Because of
you, tonight" and "Sleepwalk in Rome" to press the hand on incisive riffs,
elaborated rhythms and basilar stops and goes; and again "Nightdriver" to
reveal the more sentimental part of the Italian band, between the hums of
the most dreamy Elbow and the most romantic Anathema. Over all, absolute
protagonists, together with the declaimer and epic voice of the singer, we
find the guitars of Alessandro Pace, debtor of both the latest (and latest
but one) British rock in the dynamics and the goth masters, on whose
carpets and levels every single song is built. "Dopoguerra" goes beyond
every expectation: strong in the (almost) unanimous praises of critics and
audience, the album gains the deserved status of little cult album of
Italian rock to preserve with care.
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