Alexander Tucker
Portal

THE REVIEW

Some albums are like wine; after bottling, they need a good period of maturation in the bottle to acquire the right balance (and to evolve). Thus, it can happen that we give hasty judgments (positive or negative) about a new record release. Sometimes it requires a period of rest in a dark place (the Hard Disk?), away from prying ears, to allow time to "open up" and finally understand an album.

It is certainly not a golden rule, many albums that at first listen (we) dislike, even after years of maturation, do not change. But sometimes it may happen that an album is reborn from its own ashes, giving us an unexpected surprise.

Such is the personal journey that led me first to praise, then devalue, and finally forget this third effort by Alexander Tucker (English folk singer, young, already a collaborator with O'Malley of Sunn O))), neo-primitivist painter à la Banhart, and creator of his own cover art).

An album easily labeled as either derivative and boring or as a fine example of psychedelic folk turned towards the modern drone. The truth, as we know, is always in the middle.

A good album, then, which carries forward an absolutely personal discourse, but that, as it happened with the previous two, lost the comparison with the big guns available (especially Ben Chasny). Alexander remains a bit too similar to himself, a devotee of a psychedelic folk made of "grazing ghosts" on the moors ("Poltergeist Grazing"), declined in its most hypnotic and mantra-like form (the oriental rhythm of "Omnibaron" and the cyclical arpeggio of the final "Here" are emblematic in this sense), but penalized by a monotonous and monotonal vocal timbre ("Veins To The Sky" heard once is beautiful, then you will come to hate it). More interesting are the (small) deviations from the path so far widely trodden: "Bell Jars", filled with the usual atmosphere of imminent danger, but with a xylophone that gives a slightly less gloomy touch to it all; the almost ambient folk of "Energy For Dead Plants", giving you a breath of fresh air and hope after the gloom of the first part of the album.

An interesting artist, Tucker, with great promise, provided he tries to vary the register and atmospheres, a tad beyond the thin threshold between comatose sleep and acid wakefulness.