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The new work from Blonde Redhead comes a bit late, considering it's been 4 years since the damaged lemons of "Melody" and 3 since the linguistic adventures of "Melodie Citronique"... and it shows, ciumbia if it shows. Just listen to the first, melancholic notes of Elephant Woman: decadent atmospheres with a classic and Central European flavor (from Touch&Go to 4AD, is it noticeable?! the Cocteau twins are knocking on the door...), a sound transposition, crafted with heavy doses of keyboards and guitars, of the Art Nouveau style (and intricate flowers everywhere, from the booklet to the T-shirts!); Simone and his drums always colossal without seeming so, the beautiful voices of Amedeo and the sweet, shy, and absent Kazu and... the electronics? The electronics are the great, apparent absence of "Misery": those harsh experiments that in 2000 had branded that masterpiece "Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons" now reduce to an imperceptible background, they touch up, refine, but remain in the background.
Songs then, in the classic sense: the first impression is that they all seem a bit similar to each other, but here lies the beauty of the record: a few listens and you can't get these melodies out of your head, and time after time you notice nuances that previously went unnoticed... as they say, complexity behind simplicity.
Result? A different, ethereal, soft and delicate album (Less electronic Air, cleaner and calmer My Bloody Valentine, Smiths, Japan, and Cabaret Voltaire less 80s, all in the blender and press start), in some cases on the edge of a dream (Anticipate, Magic Mountain); it seems that only Equus, placed at the end, maintains contact with the band's recent past ("In an Expression..."), but perhaps there are more links scattered throughout the album with "Melodie Citronique", especially for the echoes of Serge Gainsbourg (the French songwriter who they covered with Slogan 3 years ago) and for the influence of certain sounds typical of Italian light music from the '60s - '70s (especially Battisti, whom the Pace twins confirmed they appreciate).
In short, not a Blonde Redhead album as we knew them.
Perhaps a step back, inevitable, compared to its predecessor, but... take Radiohead: they have always moved forward in complexity, with courage, and now they are stuck in a masterpiece of technique from which, however, little or no feeling emanates, so aseptic it is...
...sometimes perhaps it's good to rewind, like Blonde Redhead, and change course.
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