Blessed Child Opera - The Italian path to alt-folk

Blessed Child Opera is the project of Neapolitan singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer Paolo Messere. It was launched between the late '90s and early 2000s, with the aim of reviving the crepuscular, decadent and romantic strand of auteur folk-rock. The opposition to the protest folk-punk that raged throughout the previous decade (and would keep raging for another five years) couldn't be more clear-cut. Against those emphatically festive hoedowns, Messere sets a slow and solemn songbook, expansive in its craft, velvety in its orchestration, and at times even harsh in atmosphere. His most immediately apparent merit is certainly that of having helped Italian audiences become acquainted with the existential strains of folk (Red House Painters, Idaho, Sophia), using a relatively narrow stylistic palette that, precisely for that reason, proved malleable and compatible with mixed-technique orchestration. At first these arrangements were simply chamber-like, then gradually electrified, electronic, and acoustic again, eventually blurring the stylistic core until it became inseparable from the composer's own spirit.

The songs on the first, spare Blessed Child Opera (2001) are accordingly traditional folk ballads centered on the leader's acoustic guitar, flanked by accordion and violin, only sporadically enriched with xylophone and drums, sung in a thin, reedy voice, and virtually uninterested in any catchy refrain. "No Way Out" and "Violence Like Ware Borderline Of Collapse" are nonetheless carried off with an almost epic breadth and scope. In "The Morning After" the band then reaches a genuine, Tex-Mex-flavored collapse, like Soul Asylum slowed down and mangled beyond recognition. Here and there, unreal, even psychedelic dissonances peek through. And through the crepuscular repetitions of the formulaic "So Blind", the record attempts to strike a difficult balance between anemic tones and colossal ambitions.

Having moved first to Tuscany, then to Lazio, then to Sassari and finally settling for good in the Catania area, Messere went on to found Seahorse Recordings, under whose banner — among other productions — the subsequent Blessed Child Opera albums would be released.

While staying true to their own spirit, Blessed Child Opera already shift gears on the following Looking After The Child (2004): their Franciscan austerity sheds its robe and starts walking, naked, into tragedy. This is achieved above all through an innate rhythmic drive, which amounts to something of a about-face in their trajectory. "Flashing Lights" even comes alive with an acceleration that is both urgent and deathly, while "Blue Station" ratchets up the tension in a way that recalls the best of Louisville post-rock.

"Too Much Snow" improves on the anemia of the first record, and is in fact their classic ballad, worthy of Yo La Tengo, whereas in "Pimba Buona" the mechanical sobs of the percussion only deepen the tears in the vocals.

Equally important are the noir atmospheres that draw just the right amount from Berlin-period Nick Cave (obsession and doomed poetry, plus haunted xylophones), or from the depressive-period Neil Young (hysterical electrification, dragging vocals), to piece together genuine, desolate urban laments: “Pimba Cattiva”, “Starfish And Crowns”, The View, “Kill The Moment”. Worth remembering too are the supporting pieces: “Escape Song”, almost a raga with electronic dissonances; “To Reach Peace”, sung by Carmen D'Onofrio in a Tim Buckley-ish trance; “I Look Forward”, which still echoes the purity of the previous record; and above all the eight minutes of “Her Januaries”, part psychodrama of lost voices, part crescendo of sonic transfiguration. The ensemble is well-tuned, tight and refined. The result is a truly monumental song cycle, where each track is in turn a small cycle of sound, built on meticulous craftsmanship and production.

Happy Ark (2007), from its very title, continues the natural swing of the pendulum: from the calm of the first record to the grand sorrow of its follow-up, it now arrives at a new bittersweet joy, not without its own twilight undertones. Here Messere strips back the arrangements, paring them down to guitars, but he doesn't go back on his word, from “Polish Me” (chamber strings) to “It Strucks Me” and “Minor Company” (stretched-out electronics), all the way to an avant-garde arrangement (percussive noise and near-random sonic events) for the spectral “The Chain”.

In the ensemble's poetics, the suffering remains, but Messere's melodic instinct comes to the fore and stands out more than ever. In a sense, this is already a solo work of his in all but name. What emerges sits somewhere between the more cheerful Red House Painters and the more languid, ballad-leaning Smashing Pumpkins (or Cure, or Radiohead). These are crescendo-driven hymns: the crackling, moved one of “Everything Touch Mee Words And Kicks”, a progression-agony of volume and dynamics that makes it his own “Paranoid Android”; “To Be Another Queen”, with near-jazz touches of clarinet and vibraphone; and above all the lurching, screeching “Strong Medicine”, with its most obvious nods (though electronically reprocessed) to Velvet Underground's “Venus In Furs”.

Soldiers And Faith (2008) instead marks a certain drying-up of inspiration, a certain calculated coldness in constructing a mood more depressed than ever, as if that had become Messere's sole preoccupation. It's no accident that the twilit acoustic nursery rhymes win out here, “Soldiers And Faith” and “Couple Of Smiles”. Aside from the bolero of “Christ Is On The Wall” and a “Summer Waits” finely inlaid with cello, too many songs slip into generic Radiohead-style post-britpop (“That's Life”, “Do You Believe In Love”, “It Looks Like She's Falling”).

The most ethereal, even delicate work to date, Fifth (2011) opts precisely for the register of a melancholy-based serenade. The approach is subtly simpler than in the past (though the solemn “Ruby Light” and “Lonely Friend” still tie back to it, along with another crescendo in “Nothing Is In Place When It Should”, a counterpart to Radiohead's “Everything In Its Right Place”). Messere sets a distinct accent to characterize the prevailing mood on each track: banjo for “Falling”, atmospheric electronics cradling “Closed Doors”, gospel organ for the spirited “Clear Sky Optimistic”, loving strings on “Between Us”, and so on, up to the folk-soul of “Promised Circle” — with its skewed horns and bluesy gestures, part spectral, part dissonant — the creative arrangement peak of his career.

Distortion is almost banished here. The difference is subtle, certainly not glaring, but the music on this album sits at practically the opposite pole from the Luciferian layering that underpinned Looking After The Child, even though it follows the same orchestral logic, just toned down to properly bring out the leader's existential hymns.

The ship steered by Messere and company — a crew that, incidentally, keeps reshuffling — imperceptibly changes course with every release: from the realm of chamber sonata-ballads à la Lambchop and Tindersticks, it now veers toward an increasingly personal affair. The Darkest Sea (2013), the most meticulously finished record to date, delivers his best production yet. By now everything hinges on the crystalline tones of the acoustic guitar, chiming like a harpsichord, and on lyrics clearly shaped by a sense of the damned.

Aside from a resurgence of guitar distortion (“A Lazy Shot In The Belly”), the project reaches new heights: the sardonic, Tom Waits-style ballad of “I Look At You”, the hysterical high notes of “I Had Removed Everything”, the dark Cohen-esque hallucinations of “Misunderstood” — another gem of atmosphere — the moaning ghost codas of “Blindfold” and “December Wind”, and the melodramatic lament-tango that closes the record, “In The Morning”. With the virtue — or flaw — of having become easy listening (the near-pop, near-wave “You Can't Teech Me”), this album, in almost half the running time of its direct predecessors, conjures emotions far more vivid and sharp.

On The Devil And The Ghosts Dissolved (2015) Messere plays everything himself, but the result isn't exactly his own “Pink Moon” — it's actually a minor work, content with tender, pained dedications: the near-doo-wop of “I'm Gonna Wait My Love” and “Mother”, ideas carried over from its predecessor but left unfinished, as in “Painted Horses”, and a “Despair Like A Trail” that wouldn't be out of place on “The Good Son”; it works best when it strips everything away to rediscover a melodic song form, as on “No One”.

The touch of class lies in the opening and closing moments, which, fittingly, are by their very nature songs without a beginning or end: “We Can't Be Rivals Of God”, now in fully gothic territory, a duet between an opera singer and a damned soul calling directly from beyond the grave, and the first part of “I Know Everything”, a subdued yet solemn strum surrounded by formless electronic noise and galactic drones. Lesser, by contrast, are “Who I Am” and the brooding procession of X Star. A confused, unbalanced record, undermined above all by a certain mannerism.

A Wonderful Breath Of Life (2017) once again renews the project's sound, always through subliminal means: Messere the arranger and producer takes precedence here. At its center lies the elegant despair of Nick Cave, whom Messere sings reverentially with dragged-out, accentuated phrasing, especially on “Tell Me That's How You Wanted”, but also on “So What Does It Mean” (which mimics the duet with PJ Harvey), a kind of chaotic synth-pop.

The orchestrations bring back strings, but it's mainly the electronic section that makes the tubular bells and catacomb-like recitation soar on “It's Not To Take For Granted”, along with a phantasmagoric chiming on the title track “A Wonderful Breath Of Life”.

The second half of the record, by contrast, feels more drained (the Neil Young-style lament “Maybe I Should Silence Them At All”).

The double album Love Songs/Complications (2018) splits sharply into two what in previous records was more or less successfully blended. The first disc, “Love Songs”, true to its title, marks a conspicuous retreat into a routine of mostly acoustic ballads of indistinct quality. As shown by the backbone with which he arranges the aching folk-rock of “I Force Myself”, this nonetheless remains the territory where Messere's command is matched by few others. The songs, though, are disjointed, mawkish, simply unsuccessful, aside from a handful (“Boat Sunk Years Ago”, “In Your Panties”, the lopsided tango of “Wondering In The Street”) that are little more than pleasant, plus the majestic, almost dreamlike alt-country waltz of “Just Like A Mental State”. What's missing is a true melodic center to justify them. The second disc, “Complications”, is on the other hand one of his most irrational, chaotic and creative. “You Don't Need It” uses several techniques at once: limping Tom Waits-style orchestrations, trip-hop-style sampling, a fatalistic, dragging gait à la Crime & The City Solution. This thunderous opening resurfaces, varied in the most unexpected ways, throughout what follows: in the phantasmagoric, crumbling “Pray That God”, in the dark electronic serenade of “Nothing Can Stop Me” (in the vein of late Leonard Cohen), in the medina-like commotion that disrupts and overtakes “Do You Have Chosen For Life?”. “Live Forever In Oblivion” pushes all the way into a sinister, dissociated sense of suspension; so does “As A Gift From Some God”, though its sound sources seem to multiply and blur as in a hall of mirrors. “Kill That Bastard” is a small acid-rock nightmare. These same intuitions resurface, in part, in the customary moment of Nick Cave-esque piano elegance, “Loosing In Your Arms”. Strip away the filler, and the second disc often resembles a collection of miniature chamber sonatas. “Complications” ranks among his best work, “Love Songs” among his worst.

Messere puts a temporary end to his adventure under the Blessed Child Opera name with the EP Liars (2019), before rising again as Ostara's Bless alongside Matteo Anelli for a new double album, Masculine/Feminine (2022). The first disc, “Masculine”, isn't structured into proper songs but into fragments that make up one long homily with strong Arabic overtones, starting with “Alsalat Alearabia”, which recalls the great passionate tragedies of Jim Steinman (thunderous pacing, grandiose choral atmosphere, keyboards and exhausting dissonances), along with “Myrtus” and “Moneta di mare”, a grieving chant scattered amid dancing waves. His voice, more than ever sub-Waits and sub-Cave, weaves through and intersects industrial-tinged Muslim dirges, from “Fear Of The Neglect” to “Nubi ed ombre dal sole” (here with light dub inflections too) to “Stelle e ricci”, but truly rises to the occasion with real commitment on the most pan-ethnic track of all, “Siliculosus” (a first, cello-led chamber section, followed by a second part that breaks into a brisk Sufi dance). On the second disc, “Feminine”, he sets aside the last remnants of the singer-songwriter to fully embrace the role of conductor of orchestras and (female) voices. Messere thus finds himself orchestrating quiet turmoils of overlapping vocals (“Chaos”, “Eros”, a watercolor of faint Persian hypnosis in trip-hop form, and “Dancing Ghosts”) or of instruments (“Arab Loopmaster”, “I See You In That Blinding Mirage”), almost inevitably ending up crafting three gems of a possible world-beat revival: “The Sleeper”, “Corset” (a broken, turbulent dance paired with desert-like vocals) and “Horses/Seahorses” (the most exhilarating of the three, almost a rave-up). Overall there are a few flaws born of confusion, and perhaps too much faith placed in the gloss that digital tools allow, but there's no denying the rediscovered confidence of its creator with a multitude of stringed and wind instruments, consonances and dissonances, along with a renewed sense of pathos. This is less a resurrection than an artistic reincarnation.

Another project of the duo is Big Self, from the self-titled Big Self (2023). This time the intent moves toward an ever-darker synth-techno-pop rendered in a thoroughly hi-tech fashion, but the heart of the record once again reveals what Messere does best these days: Middle Eastern arrangement tapestries ("Victim Of My Own Mystery", "The Snakes Of The Islanders"). What makes things interesting, then, are the hybrids born of this sort of stylistic crisis: "I Free You", with its rarefied, fractured vocal, somewhere between Morrison and a mellifluous dandy, set within an orchestration of sumptuous sacredness, and the robotic Kraftwerk-like pattern steeped in Maghrebi incense with a drawling, spoken delivery (a gender-less Nick Cave) on "Among Galactic Ghosts". Another deliciously improbable moment is "On The Thread Of Red Passions", a croaking, Tom Waits-like vocal set against an imploded backdrop with vague glam-pop echoes of Buggles.

These small flashes of magic struggle to recur on the follow-up, The Second Chance (2024), an album of leftovers and half-sketched ideas. "Run Away" and "I Come Back Home From The Morning Clouds" are lifeless, fussy rehashes of his Eastern-tinged atmospheres. "September Cold In A December Dream" and "Your Eyes Are A Mix Of The Time We Miss" fare no better on the synth-pop front, but at least "Mercenary" and "You All Made Me Look Crazy", drawing on the more theatrical side of dark-wave, can claim a bit more pathos. With better arrangements, "I Am Still A Great Man Despite My Age And The Violence" could have become his trip-hop hit, but then "Swept Away" veers dangerously close to the poppier side of Simple Minds.

Messere returns after six years to his flagship moniker Blessed Child Opera with Red Flags (2025), though the approach remains the same, still alongside Matteo Anelli from the parallel projects.

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