KLIMT 1918 - Sentimentale Jugend

It had been a full eight years since we'd last heard from Klimt 1918, because in today's Italy it's complicated to achieve almost anything, let alone make a living as a musician. While finding themselves "forced" to deal with the more serious responsibilities of adulthood, Marco Soellner and co. kept writing and - in their spare time - rehearsing, with the aim of eventually following up "Just In Case We'll Never Meet Again", which by now dated back to 2008.

In the end they wrote and recorded so much material that, thanks to German label Prophecy, the opportunity arose to release two albums. That's how "Sentimentale" and "Jugend" took shape, the first slightly more "atmospheric" ("Montecristo"), the second a touch more intense ("Sant'Angelo"), yet so cohesive with each other that the band opted for a simultaneous release.

"Sentimentale Jugend" is a bold project, both for its sheer scale (we're talking 19 tracks for a total of 108 minutes, plus a bonus track in the limited edition with double CD and a 48-page booklet), and for its unusually convincing alternation between Italian and English, as well as for its precise stylistic reference point: a melancholic shoegaze framework overflowing with melodic ideas, able for the first time to clearly define the personality of the four musicians involved.

Ethereal dream-pop-derived vocals, effects-laden guitars perpetually on the verge of detonating, synth brushstrokes poured into the amplifiers, building a wall of sound as impenetrable as the fog depicted on the cover. The reference points are to be found not so much in the classic Ride, Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine, but rather in the recent trajectory of America's Nothing or in the early work of our own Giardini di Mirò.

The Roman band's fourth album thus stands out for its intensity and epic quality, almost entirely banishing any previous goth-metal, alt-rock and indie-pop influence, retaining just a slight wave drift here and there ("Belvedere") and establishing from the very first tracks ("Comandante" and "La notte" verge on perfection) an emotional charge so intense it becomes at times almost unbearable.

The sheer length doesn't undermine the brilliance of the final result, even if keeping attention levels high throughout a monolith of this scale is a genuinely tough task, with solutions and dynamics that inevitably tend to repeat themselves.

A nagging doubt remains: would a leaner record - trimming a few more "ambient" passages and dropping the one cover included, the forgettable "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin, yes, the one from "Top Gun" - have been more effective, and perhaps more digestible for a wider audience?

But evidently the band's goal is to make no compromises, and aware of holding the record of their lives in their hands, they refuse to give it to us in anything less than its entirety. "Sentimentale Jugend" is such a beautiful and fascinating tome precisely because it's so deliberately imperfect, and it has the strength to mark the highest point in the career of Klimt 1918, an encyclopedic work destined to place them among the finest names on the European shoegaze scene.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

09/12/2016