L'ALTRA - In The Afternoon

You feel like listening to something and you think of Chicago. What do you do? Obvious: you dig through your records for Tortoise and plunge into that absolute masterpiece known as “Millions Now Living Will Never Die”. Let's assume, though, that you want something different, something that can make you close your eyes to forget all the daily rush, something that can rock you slowly and gently… Chicago won't let you down this time either: just get close to L’altra to enter a dimension that's tremendously unreal in its melancholy delicacy, grazed by a light suffering meant not to cause pain, but only genuine emotion.

These are the feelings given off by “In The Afternoon”, as if the reticence of Low entered the visions crafted by Spain alongside some of the atmospheres typical of Christian Frederickson's Rachel’s. Just once, let yourself be brushed by a hypnotic, sulfurous vocal delivery, built on the interplay between Joe Costa and Lindsay Anderson, with guitars often barely sketched in and never reluctant to leave room for tremendously utopian piano moments. And when Fred Lonberg-Holm's cello is added to the mix, it's hard not to reach for the word masterpiece. From the opening of “Soft Connection” to the instrumental close of “Goodbye Music”, you're surrounded by sounds that are always minimal, yet you never sense any kind of lack.

The elegance of tracks like “Certanty” and “Black Arrow” is nowhere to be found in many of today's more celebrated acts, and by the time “Broken Mouths” arrives, words become useless: an unceasing, twilight melancholy spills over into the weeping of a piano bound to touch the emotions of anyone unashamed to shed a tear during a song. Giving up that tear would be too great a regret: perhaps paradise doesn't exist, but it's nice to be able to imagine it.

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28/10/2006