A Girl Called Eddy
A Girl Called Eddy

I don't understand why it hurts so much, yet I thought I was used to it, but there it is...

Helplessness. It took me months to find the words to describe this album, but in the end, I only needed one. Imagine being suspended in a womb, listening to the sound of your desperate mother becoming your thoughts. Rocked yet left alone in the world. As if you were in front of a mirror, your eyes searching for something in the reflected eyes, wandering along the face only to find nothing in the end. My grandmother would say "e che amma fa, nun c'è che fa" ("What can we do, there's nothing to do"); indeed, there is absolutely nothing to do. It's time for bitter reflections on a wound that will heal, leaving a scar.

I've listened to this album at various times in my life, but it was always when I listened to it in solitude while walking that it gave me its best. And that's how I recommend you do it; now that it's summer, there's nothing like being with headphones in your ears, walking alone along the shoreline, the sun setting, volume high enough to block out external noises, people passing by seeming to pass right through you. You and the velvet voice of Erin Moran (the girl called Eddy). You and your broken heart.

11 simple, pop songs in the purest sense of "accessible", but with great ambition. Meticulously crafted, all more or less mid-tempo. Subtle, yet explosive. Extremely elegant, right from the opening of "Tears All Over Town", a ballad with gently strummed guitar and a very bitter lyric, with a refrain that to give you an idea goes: "I'm scattered like newspapers along the street / I see your face in everyone I meet / I avoid the corners / I avoid your name / I know I loved you, but I loved you in vain". With the next track "Kathleen", the atmosphere shifts to what I would call "noir", a background of violins draped with jazzy, smoky sounds, the fog of memories. This atmosphere is what you will find more or less throughout all the other tracks ("Somebody Hurt You", the waltz "People Used To Dream About The Future", the heartrending "Heartache"), except for some more electric outbursts ("The Long Goodbye", "Golden", at the end of the album) or uptempo ("Life Thru The Same Lens", irresistible, almost chill-out), that help to refresh an air that might become a bit too heavy, even though we all know a broken heart loves to simmer in its own broth. In all the compositions, Erin Moran's soulful singing stands out, never shouted, always whispered, never harsh, warmly enveloping.

In conclusion, I must mention the heartbreaking refrain of "Somebody Hurt You" which I prefer not to translate so as not to deprive it of all its poignant inevitability: " 'Cause I'm lonely like only the broken can know / Aching for love but afraid to show / Lonely like only the broken can be / Breaking my own heart to make you see / See how I miss you". 

Undoubtedly a