QUE PIENSAN DE ESTE DISCO
PRESS - UNITED KINGDOM
AMERICANA UK
Italians hone their drones and make no bones no need to liken to Califone. FD’s first record was like a strange Heath-Robinson type machine cobbled together with left over parts without any discernable function - interesting but lacking a real purpose. With this release they’ve got engineering drawings, finely tooled equipment and a confidence in what they are doing, and the result is a finely honed muscular beast. Behind most of the tracks, and this may alienate some listeners, are drones, swirls of noise that seemingly have no discernable purpose apart from to skew the listening pleasure or to remind us that in the modern world things are always on like the singing of the pylons. However, ‘Sounds Like Rain’ weaves the drone though the main body of the song - it is knitted into the fabric, so that taking it away would rob the song of something essential. It also acts as a contrast to some of the more beautiful parts of the song. The drones function much like they do in beehives; they are the foundation for the more highly developed entities to express themselves, so here there is plenty of space for ‘All Your Body Broken Clues’ to build into a jerking spasm of guitars, or the near absence at the beginning of ‘Your Perfect Skin Line’ to feel like something is missing - you’re straining to here it. Whereas there are only tiny eddys of sound unconnected until the vocals arrive to join them together, there is a degree of muscularity and treatment of space that marks them out as a kind of post-alt-country version of Shellac: there is the same discipline and almost absolute control over what they are doing. Everything comes together on ‘We Don’t Care’ which sounds like they’ve taken the bucolic industrial sound of Califone and the cracked genius of Sparklehorse, added there own sprinkling of Italian magic and come up with something that is gentle and hard all at the same time - strummed acoustics come up against squalls of electronica, the vocal melody standing out from the morass of sounds. And how about ‘Travel in Space’, perhaps the first Americana record to reference Sun Ra. Maybe not directly but the squiggles of sound are straight from the other-worldly genius and the chorus with its tight string curls and interstellar drones could have fallen from his cape. ‘Me and My Dreams’ is more conventional with back porch violins, simply splashed drums and vocal harmonies showing that they have constructed something that has elements of both the avant-garde and the popular. They’ve knitted these things together to create a record that is immediately pleasurable and also enduring.
Date review added: Thursday, October 20, 2005
Reviewer: David Cowling
Reviewers Rating: 8 out of 10
IS THIS MUSIC?
More European neighbours showing us how it should be done, Bologna’s
Franklin Delano’s (named after 32nd US President Roosevelt, fact fans) second
album is an indiepop joy from start to finish. Coming on like a less defunct,
more acoustic Versus, complete with boy/girl vocals from Paolo and Marcella, Franklin
Delano have much to recommend them across the 11 tracks here. It would be crass
to pick out any single track as a highlight when they are all so good and form
such a satisfying whole. Find a space for it on your mp3 player and fall in love.
[ACB]
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TASTY FANZINE
I’m going to begin this review by confessing to losing the press release so if what follows sounds stupid in light of facts I don’t know I’m sorry; I didn’t know. Franklin Delano are an Italian Alt / New Country band but I don’t believe they came together to play country music. I think they started as a rock band that morphed into a country band.
The reason is the vocals, Franklin Delano have a vocalist(s) (male and female) who would sound fine in up tempo songs with a hail of sound behind them but slowed down, plying their trade in the twists and turns of Alt Country with some over wordy lyrics sound laboured, disaffected in a way that’s…well…disaffecting.
This is a great shame because instrumentally this is a wonderful album and I do really mean wonderful; so good that if it were re-released as an instrumental album it would be a compulsory purchase. As it is… I don’t know. Try it, you might be able to get past the deadpan vocal delivery but I couldn’t.
MJL
Album: Like A Smoking Gun In Front Of Me
Label: Madcap Collective/File-13
Released: 2005
