Bel Canto
Birds of Passage

THE REVIEW

The masterpiece was in the air, solely and exclusively a matter of time; with "White-Out Conditions," Bel Canto introduced themselves, demonstrating from the outset that they had the makings of champions, and with a bit more experience behind them, a clearer, more organic, and elaborate vision, as well as greater availability of economic means, the consecration was not long in coming, materializing as early as 1989 with this "Birds Of Passage," a work of art I do not hesitate to call sublime without any kind of reservation. Changing, mutable, and enigmatic, this album gracefully slithers into the listener's psyche despite the impressive deployment of winds and strings that theoretically could have weighed down the sound. As much as I try, I can't find a single flaw, even a venial one; a perfect fusion of electronic, world music, folk, and operatic pop, poetry, and spiritual elevation, many different sounds that harmoniously merge into a sensual and disorienting flow, so beautiful, pure, and uncontaminated that it doesn't even seem of this world.

Anneli sings very differently compared to the debut, often seeking a relatively low register here, a confident and linear approach that inspires the attention and reverence due to an extraordinary, almost sacred figure; a change in line with the calmer and more reflective atmospheres of the album, sometimes veering into a trip-hop contaminated by ethnic influences as in "Intravenous", a spiritual introspection in search of a guiding light, and "Birds Of Passage", hermetic poetry centered on change as the natural and inevitable order of things or pure and ethereal in a melancholic snapshot of solitude like "Picnic On The Moon", where the candid lyricism of a child's fantasy shatters against the disenchanted prose of reality. The more shamanic and dark soul of Bel Canto lives again with "Dewy Fields", where percussion and French horns mark a cadenced and martial rhythm interspersed with a hypnotic piano line, almost reliving in a more unconscious and allegorical perspective the disorientation of "White-Out Conditions" and in the dark-orchestral elegy of "The Suffering", whose words seem to echo those of Calypso, the pain of the awareness of eventually having to lose her Ulysses and return to a life of solitude, "Tears won't help me find the reason why you suddenly disappeared out of my sight, I was mistaken but now I'm sure, I love you still but silently inside I know my feelings won't change your mind". Rem