Giardini di Miro' - Beyond post-rock

After the self-titled 1998 debut that brought them to the forefront of the Italian indie scene, it's thanks to Rise And Fall Of Academic Drifting (2001) that the band from Cavriago achieved their definitive national breakthrough. A finely crafted, harmonious work in every respect. Their ability to fuse melody and sonic texture into an electrically perfect, aching whole comes across right from the Morricone-esque "A New Start" as the band's true distinguishing trait.

This is certainly one of those albums that demands a careful, and above all relaxed, listen to be fully appreciated in every facet. Only then can you let yourself be carried away by the dreamlike rides of "Beauty Tape Rider" or "Pearl Harbour". Compared to their earlier work, the addition of violin and cello has also helped make the arrangements far more symphonic and limpid, seemingly stripping away the electric sheen that had marked their previous two EPs, "Gdm" and "Iceberg". Seemingly, of course, because bursts of acceleration can still rear their head with all due violence, as in "Trompso is OK", hitting the listener with several g-forces' worth of thrust. Many have already tried to pigeonhole GDM as close relatives of Mogwai and the other masters of European and North American post-rock, such as Godspeed You Black Emperor!. On closer analysis, though, both comparisons turn out to be reductive, once you step outside the restrictive tendency to lump such different instrumental experiences together under the single umbrella of post-rock. Quite simply, Giardini di Mirò - and perhaps this is where their true originality lies - have managed to build their own sonic dimension without becoming too easy prey to Mogwai-style sonic distortion or the gorgeous epic temptations of GYBE!.

Also worth mentioning is the contribution of Matteo Agostinelli of Yuppie Flu, who lends his voice to the sweet, melancholy "Pet Life Saver", and of the Tram singer, who performs "Little Victories", the album's emblematic ballad. Definitive confirmation of just how high Giardini di Mirò are aiming, and of just how international the landscape of new Italian music has become, increasingly turned toward - and warmly welcomed by - the foreign market.

Upon the release of their follow-up Punk… Not Diet (2003), Giardini di Mirò were being watched closely by every fan of “made in Italy” indie-rock. And, as with Yuppie Flu, the wait was rewarded with an album that, in some respects, proved surprising.

Giardini di Mirò managed to renew themselves without losing their identity, shaking off the uncomfortable comparisons some critics had hastily thrown their way (Mogwai, GY!BE, for instance). They intelligently broadened their horizons, embracing conventional song structures in some cases, weaving in bits of minimal electronics and, above all, making far greater use of vocals. Vocals that give the compositions more balance and enrich them with unexpected shades.

It's the voice that takes centre stage right away, first on the opening track, "Too Much Static For A Beguine", where Ronnie James's warm spoken delivery welcomes us in, buoyed by a suspended, dreamlike atmosphere, and then on the gorgeous "The Swimming Season", where Alessandro Raina's singing carries us to what is, for this writer, one of the album's high points: that breathtaking interplay of trumpet, clarinet and sax, which shows how far this album's influences reach beyond the narrow world of indie-post-rock.

Next comes the single "Given Ground (oops… Revolution On Your Pins!)", with Raina's voice again dominating the scene, backed by the ethereal harmonies of Kaye Brewster (already featured on last year's "The Soft Touch Ep").

A subtle tension runs through almost the whole record, finding free release on one of the best tracks, "Connect The Machine To The Lips Tower *Be Proud Of Your Cake*": an "old-school" track, circular, angry and anguished, through whose weave Herrmann's electronic parts – minimal and unsettling – find their place.

Electronics also play a part in the following "Once Again A Fond Farewell" and "The Comforting Of A Transparent Life", and here Styrofoam shows how the barriers between post-rock and indietronica can be cleverly sidestepped. The band then return to a more classic, almost folk, approach on "When You Were A Postcard", with a banjo in the background and guitar arpeggios that increasingly feel like a single, unified melodic line striking straight at the listener's heart.

Closing things out are the two oddest, most distinctive tracks: "Last Act In Baires", almost a lullaby, with the Brewster sisters on vocals, and the closing "Dolphins Are Here To Watch Your Blue Blood Flow", a track that may recall L'altra in its use of two classic instruments, violin and piano.

Giardini di Mirò, then, continue along their path towards their own personal idea of music, and they do so convincingly, shaking things up while still maintaining an underlying continuity with their previous work – records that, however excellent, perhaps suffered from a lack of more elaborate structures; structures that here prove balanced and never heavy-handed. Giardini di Mirò rightly look beyond Italy's borders, even though something is finally stirring at home too, as shown by the ever-growing crowds at their shows, as well as at those of other Italian indie-rock bands such as Yuppie Flu, Three Second Kiss, Julie's Haircut etc.

Three years on from the successful Punk… Not Diet! , the band return to the scene with the EP North Atlantic Treaty Of Love, originally released in two parts (on LP, again through 2nd rec.) and here combined on a single CD. A lot has happened in the meantime: Alessandro Raina's vocals have disappeared, giving way to those of Jukka Reverberi and Corrado Nuccini; Luca Di Mira has released a very good solo album under the name Pillow, steeped in glitch textures and ambient electronics; the aforementioned Corrado Nuccini has been working hard on his hip-hop project with an Anticon-ish feel (due out shortly); and finally, Giardini di Mirò have also taken on production duties for the album by Zucchini Drive, a Belgian hip-hop duo who enlisted the help of the five musicians from Cavriago, as well as Markus Acher of Notwist, Alias, Populous and others.

It kicks off strong with "Othello", which features a surprisingly dance-inflected beat playing host before turning into the framework for an evocative ride full of the band's trademark melancholy: there's no shortage of the guitar interplay we've come to love, nor of tear-jerking strings and synth beds that open up onto genuinely claustrophobic, dark spaces, heightening the track's restless nature. A genuine first: Jukka Reverberi's voice, somewhere between singing and spoken word, reciting lines from Shakespeare's "Othello".

We mentioned the help given to the Belgian duo Zucchini Drive during the production phase, and here's "Little Cesar", almost a favour returned by one of the two MCs, Tom de Geeter, who lays down rhymes over a track that, in a way, brings back the classic Giardini di Mirò sound, somewhere between Mogwai and Slowdive: the marriage between alt-hip-hop and post-rock (forgive the use of these unlistenable, unreadable labels) is still very much on the cards, after having heard cLOUDDEAD over Hood, Alias over Styrofoam, etc… Having fallen for the German electronic scene well ahead of the curve, the five musicians from Cavriago offer up their own take here on a style that, while admittedly overused these days, remains alluring and engaging; the result is good and gives hope for interesting developments down the line.

Don't think, though, that this EP is merely a leap into the near future, because the past is right behind the door, knocking with the tolling of Bill Callahan's "Blood Red Bird", aka Smog, a track Giardini di Mirò have been playing live for years, and which features former member Alessandro Raina on vocals, who, in the final stretch, dares to slip in a quote from Gino Paoli's "Il cielo in una stanza": two exceptional songs covered within a single track. Olé!

The second half of the record is entirely given over to remixes: Apparat tears "Once Again A Fond Farewell" apart with slashes of abstract techno; Alias's main "crime" is turning "Given Ground" into just another "typical" Alias track; and then there's Hood.

The latter's remix is simply wonderful: "The Swimming Season", already one of the best tracks on "Punk… Not Diet!", is here exposed to a downpour of delay and reverb and shot through from end to end with uncontrolled reversed sounds.

Closing things out is The Sea's version of "Last Act In Baires", probably the weakest track of the bunch, due to its reliance on by-now overused clichés that make it decent background listening, but little more.

The long-awaited new full-length, Dividing Opinions, comes out in 2007. And within two minutes (the first two) it already makes a lot clear: certain things, now, Jukka and co. want to say without intermediaries, there's an urgency to put their faces on the line and see what happens. And that's the most obvious thing, which then also translates into a sonic impact that builds far less steadily over the course of the record: it revs up straight away, only to brake right when you'd expect the engine to blow. Instead it doesn't blow, leaving a dirty, lone guitar hanging in limbo.

On its tail comes another one introducing “Cold Perfection”, where it's again Jukka singing, where the drums are straight and the attitude is that of a pop song, naturally bastardized toward the end with an electro beat and run through from start to finish by this sense of absence, always lurking around the corner.

Just as there are the Blonde Redhead of “Misery Is A Butterfly” behind “Embers”: that sense of circular linearity, Corrado's slightly nasal voice recalling Amedeo Pace's, the gentle orchestral parts.

Strings that are anything but sweet in “July's Stripes”, quite the opposite: the tension rises, the guitars turn murky. Here the Godspeed You Black Emperor make an appearance, long a declared love of the Cavriago boys.

This time, though, the game of references isn't meant to be destabilizing “Italian-style” because, let's face it, here at home we sometimes talk about music purely in terms of resemblances, as if declared or explicit influences automatically drain a work of its power and beauty. It's a search for homegrown equivalents to the big English/American names, watching these acts grow only to then somewhat undercut their efforts by comparing them destructively, cheapening the very meaning of listening to a record or going to a show. And it's almost time to change direction.

So, this record is steeped in love for certain bands, from Sonic Youth (the closing, long, tribal-drumming “Petit Treason”) to Blonde Redhead, from Godspeed You! Black Emperor to Slowdive (the single “Broken By” strongly recalls the atmospheres of “Souvlaki”). Just so you know. There are moments of varying intensity, things that work, that are beautiful, deep. Others a bit less so.

To the first category certainly belongs “Self Help”, a track featuring a collaboration with Glen Johnson of Piano Magic, which grows more compelling as the seconds pass, thanks also to the gorgeous string arrangements that respond to the moody, romantic inflections of Glen's voice. A song. A beautiful song.

Perhaps the only note that isn't off-key, but simply out of place, is “Clairvoyance”, watered down by somewhat heavy-handed, not to say baroque, arrangements. It's, in practice, the only “weak” moment of this “Dividing Opinions”, a mature and ultimately successful album, where the Cavriago band sheds the uncertainty about what to do next that marked “Punk… Not Diet!” and makes clear, decisive choices, questioning themselves without ever losing sight of what they'd done well in the past.

For their next project, Il Fuoco, Giardini Di Mirò set out to score a film from the early twentieth century, in a manner similar to Marlene Kuntz (“Signorina Else”, ed.) and the recent “Man Of Aran” by British Sea Power (not to mention the splendid accompaniments of Yo Yo Mundi). The power of the source film's imagery breathed new inspiration into the Cavriago band; the resulting album is structured around three great movements of a possible post-rock symphony.

The first, “La favilla”, comprises the first seven tracks. Starting from a glacial prelude, it launches into a chamber sonata that takes on the most varied guises: at times a funereal swing (“xx”), at times so grandiloquent that the orchestra is tasked with standing in for the typical shoegaze distortion (“xxx”), albeit with liturgical overtones, at times almost ambient (the “theme” of “xxxxx”), at times cinematic in the manner of Nino Rota (“xxx”). In the final moments of this opening “andante”, the band deploys measured percussion, windy drones and touches of keyboard, ratcheting up the tension spasmodically to the brink of a solemn march.

“La vampa” is the most thrilling movement. The first “∞” is dissonant drone music with sound effects and random events, and an avalanche-like crescendo of kraut sound. The second is a magical run of jangling psych guitars à la Ash Ra Tempel (and insistent motorik drumming). The third is a suicidal duet between a swaying orchestra and a whirlwind of quivering electronic jolts, then congealed into a pitch-black diminuendo-decrescendo.

“La cenere” is driven by the heartbeat of the drums, which runs through both “†” tracks; it first intones a funeral march for piano and brass, with distant guitar glissandos and spectral electronic timbres, then gains weight and sinks into a cauldron of alien sounds.

A few rough edges, in any case justified by the filmic demands of scoring the medium-length feature – 1915, directed by Giovanni Pastrone, supervised by Gabriele D'Annunzio – do nothing to undermine an attempt at instrumental sublimation that reaches golden results. The least rhetorical, most Venusian, most concert-like and most disconcerting Italian film score; the best, at least of the 2000s. Luca Di Mira takes the podium.

After a five-year gap since their last studio full-length, Good Luck (2012) tries to shed the last post-rock residue, but fails to complete the transition.

The fairy-tale, multi-voiced ballad of “Memories” is only a good prelude. From here on, the dark mood remains, but the substance departs; everything sounds rather generic. “Spurious Love” and “Ride” have none of their classic slowness, nor do they possess their typical arrangement quirks, now firmly planted in melodic-ballad territory. “Ride”, with more precision and a decent chorus, is their first genuine attempt at a foray into power-pop. Their friends Yuppie Flu did the same thing, better, years ago. Another back-to-back pairing, “There Is a Place” and “Rome”, opens up a new thematic area, that of the murder ballad. The band fails here too, since “There Is A Place” sounds like a fatalistic duet between Nick Cave and PJ Harvey, and “Rome” a gothic duet between Mike Gira and Jarboe, but both sound aged, senile, dated.

The "real" Giardini Di Mirò try to resurface toward the end, but the timid space-rock attempt of "Time On Time" is all they manage to offer in 2012. "Flat Heart Society" is a reminder that on this album the scaffolding is far more fascinating than the interiors, linking back ideally to the acoustic intro of "Memories", here in an electrified version (and finally with one of their trademark shoegaze crescendos) recalling the modus operandi of the Neil Young of the great concept records.

A damp squib: the charisma is on a par with a bloated reunion album, the ease is that of mainstream production, the guest spots (Sara Lov on "There Is A Place", singer and actress Angela Baraldi, already a member of the first incarnation of Delta V, on "Spurious Love" and "Rome") sink Di Mirò, and the arrangements — besides the horns, also a negligible Stefano Pilia — fail to complete the long-awaited transitional phase.

After this flop, the Cavriago band tries the back-to-basics card, that is, a purely instrumental format, leaning once again on their own instrumental skills. Rapsodia satanica (2014) — once again inspired by the imagery of a silent film from the early 1900s — fails, however, to repeat the magic of Il fuoco, due to an excessive imbalance between the sonic apparatus and the slow, deliberate pace, and above all due to a lack of inventive spark that would hold the pieces together, by now well outside post-rock and well inside a conservative restoration.

Different Times (2018), their first true album in six years, further heightens the ongoing schizophrenia, and is a genuine rollercoaster. The guitar flair that serves as an overture is followed by two slight ballads, "Don't Lie" and "Hold On", themselves uneven in both outcome and presentation. The long, muddled "Pity The Nation" is followed by an easy pop number like "Void Slip", which in turn gives way to "Landfall", one of their finest purely instrumental sequences. The final ten minutes of "Fieldnotes" are a metaphor for the album as a whole: on one hand an imitation of late-period Red House Painters, on the other a jumble of sounds. A fragmentary album, overrun with guests, short on ideas, yet still managing to offer a bitter commentary on contemporary social life.

Contributions by Lorenzo Brutti – Aktivirus, Michele Saran ("Il fuoco", "Good Luck", Rapsodia satanica", "Different Times")