VIVA VOCE - The Future Will Destroy You

True pop-rock scavengers, in the way they bring together genres and musical eras without any apparent seams, Viva Voce now firmly belong to the ranks of unsung veterans of American alternative rock. With this sixth album, the duo confirms all of this through a strikingly varied work, played with the confidence and precision of a band with an impeccable career behind it, one that's gone from self-production all the way to Vanguard, passing through European distribution via Full Time Hobby.

From the opening "Plästic Rädio" onward, you can sense the project's many different souls, which manage to make rare reference points coexist within a record of American indie pop-rock. Unmistakable in the lead guitar lines, with those cocky, drawn-out bends, is the obsession with the Verve and with britpop in general (from which the somewhat "overbearing" attitude of the guitar parts is also drawn), while in the background an "alt-soul" saga unfolds. Elsewhere you also find drummer Kevin Robinson's taste leaning more clearly toward alt-rock, in the Built To Spill echoes of the title track.

"The Future Will Destroy You" ranges from the seventies inflections (there are several points of contact with the latest Blitzen Trapper) of the suspended "Ship Coming In", to the Fleetwood Mac of "Black Mood Ring" and the psychedelic swirls of "A Viking Love Song", all the way to the baroque setting of "The Wondering Soul", giving the impression of the freedom of a band that's having fun making music.

This allows room for the languid electronic drowsiness of the programmatic "We Don't Care", animated only by a lovely acoustic riff, and the tight pulse of the groove on "Diamond Mine" - tracks of great, understated pop elegance.

"The Future Will Destroy You" ultimately confirms the courage of a band that, true to itself, keeps going on its amusingly over-the-top path, unaware that it carries, alongside just a few others by now, the not-so-negligible burden of American alternative rock.

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20/06/2011