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Label to keep an eye on, Saddle Creek from Omaha, Nebraska: originally started as a sort of egotistical whim, it has now built a catalog of considerable depth, including that unruly genius Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes - it has recently been reported that he turned down enticing offers from a major label - which must mean something), as well as Desaparecidos, The Good Life and other promising youngsters who will need time to see the spotlight - but I assure you, time will be gentlemanly.
Just a couple of years ago, Orenda Fink and Maria Taylor moved to Omaha from their native Athens, Georgia, a city most known for giving birth to B52's and R.E.M.
In the Saddle Creek catalog, the two Azure Rays represent the most ethereal and melancholic part, poetry turned whispers, intangible songs and light vocal interweavings like butterfly wings. Their first true album after a splendid EP ("November"), "Hold On Love" encapsulates in the brief span of 12 scores a sad and melancholic world, heart-wrenching amidst its sobs and tears, that seems to wet the eyes from the first heartbeat to the last breath of a work - that we are ready to swear - will remain.
Lullabies of classic inspiration (the opening "The Devil's Feet", the sweet "We Are Mice"), Portishead echoes ("New Resolution", where electronics gently peek through), Devics reminiscences ("Across The Oceans", the concluding "Hold On Love"), Elysian Fields longings (the single "The Drinks We Drank Last Night") and in some places even the - sublime - specter of Paula Frazer appears, in the best track of the bunch, "Look At Me".
Forgive me this little personal digression. I met the two girls recently at a concert in Rome, and - as we romantics like to say - I lost my heart for Maria, beautiful, sweet, and very talented. In short: my punk and rowdy heart hopelessly lost for a storyteller from the West. All I have left of her is a photo - blurry, damn it - of me hugging her and her wide-eyed at such apparently inexplicable exuberance. Oh, but I understood it, indeed. There she went, and so did my sudden love, but her voice continues to tell me wonderful things, as if it were still the first time.
The highest points are rightfully mine, it's up to you to share or bury them.
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