IL CIELO DI BAGDAD - Export For Malinconique

The sky of Baghdad: an image that should evoke dreams and hopes… And yet, listening to "Export For Malinconique", the debut album by this trio from Aversa (Caserta), it really seems that post-rock has few hopes left.

A genre already forced to endure the uses and abuses of countless bands with neither art nor craft, and once again at the mercy of the usual romantic trick of stasis and pseudo-epic crescendos that do nothing but bore, without actually adding anything relevant, without offering solutions that are even remotely interesting.

"Export For Malinconique" is a formulaic record, where melancholy reigns, but it's a reign with no real power, because it's cloying and self-celebratory ("A Day Of Wool", "First Light Of Morning"). The inspiration never gets off the starting blocks, so very little actually happens, and what little does happen doesn't count for much. The title track, for instance, glides placidly along piano keys, and "Save Your Forest" even introduces an electronic beat. But it's too easy to play with certain sounds to nudge the needle of the heart; far harder, instead, to make it explode…

"Mr. Butterfly", "Magic Bus" and "Sunday Afternoon" fare a little better (though not by much), small, frail symphonies of ever-rising emotion. But it's too little, really too little…

What lingers, in fact, is the impression of a sound destined, forever, to repeat itself, with no possibility of ever escaping this cul de sac…

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26/10/2008