QUE PIENSAN DE ESTE DISCO
PRESS - UNITED STATES
ALL MUSIC GUIDE
Italian quartet Franklin Delano recorded the basic tracks for their American debut album, Like a Smoking Gun in Front of Me, at home in Bologna, then took the unfinished songs with them to Chicago, where they handed them off to the experimental collective Califone, who finished the record with producer Brian Deck. Impressively, it doesn't sound like a half-baked remix album, or a stilted collaboration, but like the unique, organic work of a set of likeminded musicians. There are moments of self-indulgence - the otherwise pretty opening track, "Call It a Day," fades into well over two minutes' worth of overdubbed drones, for no particular reason - but most of Like a Smoking Gun in Front of Me has the gentle psychedelic haze of prime Mercury Rev or Grandaddy, tempered with a taste for squalling guitars and sustained keyboard chords that bring to mind Yo La Tengo, Antietam, and, indeed, Califone. At their best (the dreamy country-rock of "Sounds Like Rain" in particular), Franklin Delano make the listener interested in what they're going to sound like on their own.
by Stewart Mason
BETTER PROPAGANDA
The band recorded the basic tracks of the album at Homesleep Studios in Bologna. Then they traveled to Chicago's 4Deuces/Clava Studio where their friends Tim Rutilli and Califone added layers of guitars, percussion, keyboards, and noise. Former Red Red Meat and Califone member, and producer of Modest Mouse and Iron & Wine, Brian Deck produced the Chicago overdubs and then manipulated and mixed the result into the final version of their second album, Like A Smoking Gun In Front Of Me. Franklin Delano has created a new and exciting view on American folk music. Textures blur with noise and haunting doubled voices emerge from a marsh of drones and reiterative guitars. On a solid foundation of drums and double bass is where improvisation explodes, lapsteel howls, and dueling male and female voices twist with interpretations of English words.
CHICAGO READER
(April 22, 2005)
On its second album, Like A Smoking Gun In Front Of Me (File 13), Italian indie-rock quartet Franklin Delano reveals a predilection for sluggish, druggy interpretations of Americana. A mix of lap steel, upright bass, and mandolin gives the album a glowing, leisurely tone, and though guitarist Paolo Iocca sings languidly, in a thin, brittle voice, his lines are nicely sweetened whenever Marcella Riccardi harmonizes. The band recorded the album's basic tracks at its home base in Bologna before coming to Chicago, where members of Califone helped finish the songs; Tim Rutili, Jim Becker, and Ben Massarella enhanced the music with guitars, keyboards, and percussion, and former Califone member Brian Deck mixed the album. The album, perhaps inevitably, feels a lot like Califone; it's tough to say precisely what Franklin Delano sounds without those extra layers, but there's an appealing dusky folk-rock mood at the core of the tunes.
Peter Margasak
COLUMBUS ALIVE
From Bologna, Italy, Franklin Delano is not a person, but a three-piece who look to folk and Americana's darkest corners for inspiration. Recorded with members of Califone and engineered by former Califonist Brian Deck (also known for his work with Modest Mouse), Like a Smoking Gun in Front of Me, Franklin Delano's second album, is an unnerving marriage of reverberating atmospherics and sleepy vocals. While drums and plucked guitar light each track, what's more interesting is the manner in which songs organically shift in and out of focus. As such, like Califone, they manage to merge old-as-salt idioms with new sonic textures to create something wholly unique.
CREATIVE LOAFING
The Fucked-up Folk renaissance apparently knows no borders. Franklin Delano is an Italilan four-piece out of Bologna, formed in 2002 when Paolo Iocca (vox, guitars) met Marcella Riccardi (vox, guitars, lap steel, mandolin). Their first release, All My Senses Are Senseless Today, suggested that the Italians were capable of becoming one of the more impressive practitioners of the new folk sound, making the most of the movement's embrace of synthesized accents and electrified distortion in their hallucinatory narratives. Smoking Gun takes another leap forward, the 10 songs unfurling in a gentle, opiated manner, distorted guitars and swelling synthesizers providing accents and textured intros and outros. Most of these extended introductions and closings are inspiring, some lasting up to two minutes before Iocca's hard nasal pinch of a voice enters or exits. The songs share a similar elliptical aesthetic with Califone's work; then again, Smoking Gun was recorded in the Chicago band's Clava studio under the direction of production whiz Brian Deck (Modest Mouse) and with all four C-Fone members contributing. Still, these songs stand on their own, indicative of the real roots of American music.
Track to burn: "Bus Stop"
Rating: 1/2
-John Schacht
DELUSIONS OF ADEQUACY
This Italian four-piece may be one of the first in a series of post-folk, post-alt-country bands that we’ll see cropping up in the years ahead of us. When Neutral Milk Hotel and Wilco have lost their sheen, dudes with beards will be drawn to the improvised common ground between minimalistic music and controlled chaos. This is the crossroads where the Beachwood Sparks and Black Dice meet, which wouldn’t have seemed conceivable to me a few hours ago (i.e. before hearing this album).
Crafting drawn-out crescendos, hypnotic ambient drones, simple melodies, or harsh noise, the possibilities here seem limitless. Though I prefer vocalist Marcella Riccardi over her male counterpart, Paollo Iocca, his nasal baritone isn’t any more hateful than that of Stephen Malkumus. This record also happens to be in English, a plus for those of us whose Italian vocabularies are limited to “spaghetti” and “that’s a spicedy meatbol!”
As it stands, I predict Franklin Delano will meet one of two fates; either the band is destined to pioneer this new movement, or to become unsung, obscure heroes to those of us who happened to catch wind of this record. Either way, it's a damn memorable bunch.
-Tim Anderl
06/14/05
LOST AT SEA
Rating: 8.5/10
Morphine drips into your arm via a tube plugged into a vein. The pain subsides and you breathe easy, drifting off to sleep on hospital bed that's hard and antiseptic. It's a deep sleep, but your dreams are... well, unsettling. You find yourself on a boat going upriver into the dark unknown. You might be dying for all you know. What's hiding in that tangled brush or in the shadows of hanging trees, god only knows. You think you hear leaves rustling. Were those eyes you saw peering out of the blackness? Damn it, why can't I wake up?
Oh yeah ... the drugs. And, playing off in the distance, Franklin Delano, a dark, narcoleptic country-folk quartet from Bologna, Italy, by way of Appalachia with New Deal ideas to lead us out of the No Depression era and into a spacious, more atmospheric alt-country universe. Note the science fiction theremin sounds in "Call It A Day", the drowsy Knife In The Water opener that falls into a black pit of echoing guitar and weary male-female vocals, before a slow-building storm of noise washes over you and then gives way to an annoying stretch of power-line drone.
If you guessed that Califone and Tim Rutilli had a hand in this, you'd be right. They built layer upon layer of guitars, keyboards and general noise over loose melodies that tend to wander off into the ether. That's not a bad thing, mind you. It's a matter of taste, to be sure, but I love music like this. It unfolds slowly, flowering like an orchid and revealing something new every time you listen to it. Perhaps it's something you don't want to see, like your own black heart and the shameful desires that make you blush a little at the thought of them. But it's important that you do see them.
And in "Please Remember Me", you do come face to face with the awful truth. Twisting in dusty, acoustic pop melodic winds blowing in from Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, it dips into the brackish dirges of Slint before rising up out of the water to feel the sun and hear the sparkle of reverbed guitar ripples. The mood swings are unexpected and the instrumentation is breathtaking.
The plinking piano of "Sounds Like Rain" falls like water dripping from the gutters of weather beaten old country house. Paolo Iocca weaves slide guitar in and out of Marcella Riccardi's lap steel bends like a woman who's been working a loom for years. On "Matter Of Time", you feel like you're walking to your execution, with minor chords delicately pounded out on the piano, the band taking every pained step with you.
Franklin Delano experiment with howling, discordant strings and glassy-eyed feedback on "We Don't Care", spreading ghostly tendrils of noise out over achingly beautiful acoustic guitar textures. Iocca's flat, almost buried vocals take on a pathos that swells with emotion, however inarticulate. It takes a while to get to the heart of the matter, but the wait is worth it. When Iocca sings, "We're like soldiers in a field... with no shields", his guard is down and so are our defenses. And it feels like we're World War I veterans having a drink in remembrance of fallen comrades and lost youth.
You could spend hours breaking down the parts of every song on Like A Smoking Gun In Front Of Me and wake up the next day and do it all again. There are conceits that trick you, leading you on paths with hardly any traffic. "Travel In Space" seems like its lost in space, but the sly, Morphine-inspired double-bass, delicately brushed drums and the jazzy plucked guitar keep its feet on terra firma. "Me And My Dreams", with its yearning, country-tinged violins sawing away, tricks you into believing that Nashville is close, but you're a million miles away in some dingy, desert motel room contemplating suicide.
Not the most uplifting thought that's ever crossed my mind, but Franklin Delano isn't trying to pick up your spirits. There is misery in the band's voice, especially the glazed vocal drone of Iocca and Riccardi harmonizing on "All Your Body Broken Clues", the one track that fails to deliver anything but sheer boredom and repetition. Say, the morphine is starting to work. Could you shut off the lights on your way out? I may have bad dreams after this, but any rest I can get in this life is good. Tell the nurse I need my bed pan changed too, would you?
Reviewed by Peter Lindblad
NEW SCHEME MAGAZINE
Though elements of Franklin Delano's second full length could be easily be
labeled as Americana or alt-country, the band actually hails from Bologna, Italy.
They mix this post-folk/Americana influence with much more spacey and hypnotic
elements that remind me of fellow Italian standouts Giardini Di Miro. Though this
is a pretty odd combination of sounds, Franklin Delano actually pull it off really
gracefully. They recorded the album's basic tracks at Homesleep studios in Italy,
before packing up and heading for Chicago to finish the record with former Califone
member Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Iron and Wine). They also got help in the form
of overdubs from their friends in Califone.
This recording arrangement actually goes a long way toward explaining how they
combined two pretty different ideas so well. The songs are usually fairly slow
in general, with vocal duties traded off evenly between Paolo Iocca and Marcella
Riccardi. The similar vocal styles, one male and one female, helps to add yet
another extra layer to the band's sound.
The influence of bands like Califone or at times even Wilco is pretty obvious,
though the basis for most of their songs has little to do with either. The spacey
textures, melodic keyboard and synth lines and shoegazer-style guitar work provide
a solid foundation for every song. Then, lap steel, double bass, electric piano
and string parts (most of which were added in Chicago) are all tastefully done
and represent the important finishing touches that really give this a lot of character.
The record is pretty even-keeled in terms of each song's overall feel and tempo,
which makes it hard to pick one or two standout tracks. This can make it become
background music from time to time, though it's still engaging overall. It took
some time to grow on me, though it's a conceptually and practically strong record
that will find a happy home with any fan of the bands above, especially Califone.
PANACHE ROCK
½ atmospheric indiemo, ½ countrymo. The latter is where they shine most, with more-than-capable musicianship and youthful approaches to traditional instruments. The feedback-driven former only showcases mediocrity in the lyrics and vocals, but is enjoyable nonetheless. “Me And My Dreams” is the best damn countrified rock to come out of Italy, that’s for sure. I’m more drawn in each time I listen to it. Why does such a lackluster song begin a great record? (IS)
POP MATTERS
Rating: 3
by Kevin Jagernauth
When one thinks of Italy, the usual, stereotypical images come immediately to mind. Good espresso, fresh pasta, Vespas speeding through narrow streets, beautiful wines, delicious olives, and of course, soccer. But upon spinning Franklin Delano's Like a Smoking Gun in Front of Me, listeners will be surprised to learn the band hails from Bologna. Copping the first two-thirds of President Roosevelt's name and conjuring a musical web that liberally borrows from American folk, blues, and country traditions, Franklin Delano are ready to shake any preconceived notions of their own geography for something that will reach listeners on the other side of the Pacific.
In creating Like a Smoking Gun in Front of Me, Franklin Delano laid down the basic tracks in Italy. They then brought the tapes to Chicago, and, with the help of musician Tim Rutili, producer Brian Deck, and the members of Califone, surrounded their neo-roots sound with noise and bold experimentation. If this description has images of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot dancing in your mind, you're not far off the mark, but Franklin Delano's worship at the altar of Tweedy and O'Rourke has resulted in an album that is nothing more than a pale knockoff.
The first problem with Like a Smoking Gun in Front of Me is the bizarre sequencing. The album opens with "Call It a Day", a swooping seven-minute track that ends with about two minutes of solid drone. It's a lugubrious opening to the disc and symptomatic of the larger problem that plagues much of the album. While Yankee Hotel Foxtrot lived in a world of noise, ghost voices, and avant composition, at its root was simple, well conceived songs. Moreover, Jim O'Rourke's production created an entire world in which each of the songs lived and breathed. In Franklin Delano's case, the entire exercise is a storm of sound with no eye to guide it, and certainly no aspirations of being coherent. These 10 tracks are highlighted by pointless jamming, ill-conceived detours which result in bloated running times. Only two songs fall short of the four-minute mark, while the rest sprawl out, with the worst reaching the upper registers of 11 minutes.
Perhaps worse, vocalists Paolo Iocca and Marcella Riccardi can't sell what their singing. Iocca's reedy, nasal delivery and Riccardi's unremarkably breathy voice fill the spaces but lack the emotional gravitas or intangible transcendence that allows someone like Tweedy to utter a line like "I am an American aquarium drinker" and break your heart. The performances on songs like "All Your Body Broken Clues" and "Your Perfect Skin Line" come across as third-rate beat poetry, rather than deeply felt, though abstract, musings. I don't think I can remember a single lyric over the course of the album's one-hour running time, other than those that repeat the song titles.
Franklin Delano's ambition is admirable and, frankly, refreshing. It speaks volumes about how the way we hear music has changed over the past 15 years. The Internet has made it easier for people everywhere to indulge and check out any music that intrigues them. However, what Franklin Delano have failed to do in exploring the American musical landscape is bring their own experience and history with them. One can only imagine what kind of album is waiting to be delivered once Franklin Delano begin informing their sound with their own unique perspective.
— 27 June 2005
PUNKNEWS
It appears that I must go international to be able to write a review that doesn’t contain phrases like “emotional quasi-hardcore breakdowns” or “scream-whine-screaming formula,” so thank you to Bologna, Italy’s Franklin Delano and thank you to Chicago’s File 13 for finding them for me.
As you may or may not know, the Velvet Underground is one of my favorite bands, as is the way it should be with any self-respecting indie/punk/music-lover. Their ability to produce such beautiful yet such abrasive sounds by melding melodies with screeching feedback, they set a example that, as far as I’m concerned, no band has been able to surpass. Franklin Delano replicates quite a few of my favorite VU characteristics while giving their own folky-bluesy-slowcore spin on it all. The songs are all acoustic-based, including even acoustic standup bass, but then supplemented by textural and harsh synths, amp drones and feedback galore. They even employ the male/female vocal dynamic incorporated by VU followers like Yo La Tengo. Chicago producer Brian Deck (most known for Modest Mouse’s The Moon & Antarctica and Iron & Wine’s Our Endless Numbered Days) is also a former member of Califone, and brings in his old buds to help bring even noise to the proceedings, after the band decided to transfer from the studio they were at in Bologna.
The album begins at a slow pace with “Call It A Day”, a song driven by acoustic guitar and vibrato-laced synth tones. The song is 7½ minutes in length, but spends the last three in a pool of guitar feedback and synth buzzing. At this point, the listener is either annoyed or enjoying their audacity, and I am the latter. “Please Remember Me” picks the tempo up a notch, with more typical indie arpeggiated guitars, but with a folky feel and interesting lyrics accompanying; “And if you chew that blade of grass / And if you lick that dust on the floor / You’ll find they taste like my skin.” “Sounds Like Rain” actually sounds more like feedback to me, and I love it. It’s the most mellow of feedback, gently swelling over the top of plucked acoustic guitar, bowed upright bass and a slow drum groove. Bending lapsteel soon enters and later entwines with a twangy acoustic line.
“We Don’t Care” finds another Velvet-ism sneaking into their sound as feedback is supplemented with squeaking and droning violin akin to John Cale’s style on the first VU album. After 4½ minutes of artsy meandering, the drums kick in with the most driving beat found on the album. This contrast, along with the country-fried vocal hook of “Born to die but we don’t care” make this my favorite track, as it winds it way back to the scratchy strings. “Me And My Dreams” finds the band at their most folky, with brushed drums pushing along plenty of strings and one of the best melodies on the disc, all in their most concise song. The ender “Your Perfect Skin Line” may be almost 12 minutes, but the Mars Volta they are not. Instead, they opt for a meandering drum beat and gentle guitars twisting around tin-can vocals, only to surprise with a couple of huge chords and lines like “Fuck all these feelings I’ve got in my heart,” only to die down again. The chorus comes once more, followed by a last couple minutes of pounding bass, auxiliary and odd percussion.
Along with the couple bands mentioned before, fans of Low’s slow tendencies and newer Wilco’s love of the feedback-soaked long song should also enjoy Franklin Delano. I would recommend this album to anyone with a desire for something different and with a bit of time and patience.
Review by: greg0rb
SLUGMAG
Franklin Delano = Mark Lanegan + X + Tom Waits
This album has a lot more to offer than your average acoustic release. Hailing
from Spain, this four-piece formed in 2002 and have used their practice time wisely,
putting together a package that is dark, strange and demented. Its ambience has
electric sounds that seem to be hiding in the corners waiting to jump out at you.
Entrancing and hypnotic, Smoking Gun is complemented by dual vocals that seem
to creep from somewhere down below. The entire album has a "ghost-town"
appeal—all in all, a very enjoyable and addicting, mellow and unsettling,
and lyrically bizarre album, to say the least. It will set your mood down a few
notches. Worthy of a spin in anyone’s CD player. –Speedy
SKRATCH
Prog meets folk on this bizarre release from Bologna, Italy's new-millennium
quartet, Franklin Delano. There is a lot of strange distortion here mixed with
some slow, bluesy folk tunes with very nice male and female vocals. This could
be one of the strangest studio releases ever. The band thinks nothing of playing
a five-minute space/folk song and capping it with a single, distorted hum that
echoes for two minutes until the next tune. Listening to this album is similar
to watching a foreign film: you never know what the fuck will happen. With focus
groups and budgetary concerns, it is amazing that a Chicago label like File Thirteen
Records had the balls to record and release this disc. This may not be a best-seller,
but it is art in its truest form: weird, honest, and eclectic. Veni, vidi, vici,
baby.
-Dug
Album: Like A Smoking Gun In Front Of Me
Label: Madcap Collective/File-13
Released: 2005
