L'ALTRA - Different Days

Joseph Costa and Lindsay Anderson (the minds behind the moniker "L'Altra") had managed to grab the spotlight thanks to their second work, "In The Afternoon", a jewel of rare purity, made up of a cascade of intimate, soft melodic structures, chiseled with classical arrangements halfway between folk and chamber music. It took three years to follow up on the Chicago duo's project. In three years, though, a lot can change, and it turns out that L'Altra's music has undergone some evolution too. The symptoms had already surfaced with the label change (leaving Ken Dyber's Aesthetics - Dyber being a former member of the band - for the Hefty Records of ex-Bill Ding Slicker) and with Anderson's collaboration with Telefon Tel Aviv.

The new "Different Days" indeed shifts the coordinates towards electronica: but in doing so, it's the band's personality that suffers, hiding its distinctive traits in favor of far more overused sounds. What doesn't change is the goal: L'Altra keep trying to paint pictures in soft, enveloping colors, but this time they simply fail. The sound is cold and the melodies fail to engage. The opener is "Sleepless Night", a ballad made of piano brushstrokes and phone-ring trills accompanied by an electronic pulse. Next comes "It Follows Me Around", which rests on a guitar arpeggio with a counterpoint of little bells, while the violins are pushed back into the depths of the sound.

The best thing about these tracks are the guitar detonations that interrupt the drowsy atmosphere, which turns out to be an inescapable feature of the whole record: the sought-after sweetness ends up spilling over into sheer mawkishness. So it happens that the violin-and-guitar duel of the not-exactly-excellent "Bring on Happiness" turns out to be the strongest dish served so far in this convent, simply because it's different. The extra room given to guitars on "Mail Bomb" and to electronics on "There Is No" is frankly unjustified, and instead of gaining bite the record loses it. What partially saves the day is the atypical waltz of the title track, complete with hand claps and drums, where even Anderson's voice goes back to sounding dreamy rather than dull.

Closing the circle is the instrumental digression "A Day Between", a competent, passable track, but like most of the pieces here, harmless. The turn towards electro-land, in short, has thrown off the subtle (and once-perfect) balance the band had achieved, and their class (which is still there) isn't enough to plug all the holes that have opened up. The feeling is that of watching classic fish out of water, still - and thoroughly - uncomfortable with their new tools of the trade.

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30/04/2026