LARSEN - Cool Cruel Month

After the expanded reissue of the compilation Musm, Larsen - a precious quirk of the Italian underground (albeit with a cosmopolitan bearing, see the collaboration with Xiu Xiu, XXL, the Young God deal and the guests featured on every one of their records) - return to the studio to record "La Fever Lit" (2008). "La Fever Lit" is a transitional record - transitional in the manner of late Swans - that begins to reshape their sound, torn between the post-rock with digital overtones that worked so well on records like "Play" and here becomes predictable, and vaguely gothic sung parts - courtesy of "Little Annie" Hanxiety Bandez - through whom they seek their own Jarboe (having already hosted her in person for "Seies").

"Cool Cruel Month", three years on, centres around Little Annie's contribution, so much so that the noir piano-bar introduction of "It Was a Very Good Year" sounds like an even more bored Lydia Lunch, and on "These Are the Things" the band settles, ethereal and inept, around her black-music singer poses.

More cerebral are semi-electronic ragas like "Existential Joe", on which they ape the Velvet Underground (with Little Annie cast as the Nico of the situation), "Dyslexic Haiku" - the pianistic counterpart to "Existential Joe" (with a good four minutes of ambient preamble) - and "Annie's Rap", whose title alone is basically enough to describe the track. "Ohm Av. D" also brings in vocal effects (doubled voices distantly reminiscent of Jane Siberry's excursions, but without her unpredictable complicity). Relaxation without poetry.

Only toward the end does a hint of free-form emerge ("Unheard of Hope"), on which the singer intelligently whispers rather than wailing or declaiming, but the track ends abruptly just as it begins to cast a spell. "Viggo" is one of their typical crescendos, but the electronics are nowhere to be heard (nor is any particularly forceful stylistic stamp). The artistry of the current Larsen can only be savoured in its purest form on "12 Eyes", an at times neoclassical fantasia, perhaps the only truly appetising track on the record (the one without vocals).

An EP padded out and mistaken for, and released as, an LP - and really more a collaboration between Little Annie and the band - that conveys only lukewarm passions. Even with the effective, if brief, appearances of Baby Dee on piano in "12 Eyes" and "Unheard of Hope" (the two best tracks), and of Ervin Drake (lyrics for "It Was a Very Good Year"), the creature of Modenese Palumbo - already behind ( r ) and Blind Cave Salamander, and a support act for Xiu Xiu - and Marco "Il Bue" Schiavo, flanked by the able Paolo Dellapiana and Roberto Maria Clemente, elegantly channels the avant-garde of years past into a more organic (mature?) sound. There are heavy doses of shruti-box, the Indian cousin of the accordion, alongside theremin and accordion.

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04/10/2011