Cibo Matto
Hotel Valentine

Today I want to talk to you about Hotel Valentine, in other words, the art of returning to the scene after fifteen years and pretending you were always there.
To most, the name Cibo Matto will mean nothing: the two Japanese women Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori, after founding the group in the mid-90s and achieving moderate success more in the West than in their homeland, seemed to have shelved this common project only to revive it for charity events or little else, and from the reunion announcement to the release of this third album, a good three years have passed.
If the old line-up saw the presence of Sean Lennon, the list of collaborations for this comeback is not less impressive compared to the past, with as many as two members from the friendly Wilco contributing, Nels Cline on guitar and bass and Glenn Kotche on drums. But what more do you want from a quartet of this kind, if not war, the total waaaaaaar.
Hotel Valentine hits distribution on Valentine's Day, and naturally, this is no coincidence: it was announced to the press as a concept album about a New York hotel where surreal love stories, sultry stories, and ghosts intertwine, characters sketched with irony and blunt vulgarity (the constant and casual use of swearing proves amusing), like a mysterious seducer failing to win over the ghost girl on the tenth floor, a maid who seizes clients' drugs for personal gain and enriches herself at their expense ("He made a big stain, but it wasn’t Chianti, closed my eyes, I took your weed, got high!") and the motherfucking complaints about the poor room service.

Check In is the natural welcome to the hotel: a fiery welcome that makes no room for moderate introductions nor leaves time for the unsuspecting listener to settle in calmly. The trip-hop atmospheres of the first track last only as another song opens: introduced by retro-flavored string samples, here comes Déjà Vu. The Cibo Matto immediately offer one of the best performances on the CD, swinging between goth-synth-pop moments and textbook R&B smoothness complete with a sensual chorus and rapped verses. More hip hop for MFN and Housekeeping featuring vocals from comedian and musician Reggie Watts. Worth noting is the video for MFN, trashy and self-mocking, with ultra-bright fluorescent colors and terribly 90s effects, with images that resemble ugly .gifs of the kind that amass on certain taste-questioning tumblrs.
Halfway between Far East pop and Western 80s are the rhythms of 10th Fl. Ghost Girl, featuring a skillful collaboration of drums, synth bass, and sax making it the "ballroom" of the hotel.
The title track revives the early trip-hop but enriches it with lounge shades using the saxophone and ethereal vocalizations, for an inspired result akin to that timeless masterpiece that is Maxinquaye by Tricky.
Hotel Valentine opens with trip hop and closes with the dream pop of Check Out, not without letting us exit the door feeling somewhat melancholy for the surreal atmospheres we lived in for the last half hour. Let this be enough to give the measure of the variety offered in just ten tracks, a true manifesto of the mature eclecticism achieved by Honda and Hatori.
An excellent and unexpected return for a group that demonstrates enviable artistic flair and hasn't lost a gram of the polish of the past. For those who have never listened to them, Hotel Valentine can become the starting point to begin discovering a discography limited in quantity but incredibly rich in quality.

About Hotel Valentine, in other words, the art of returning to the scene after fifteen years and pretending you were always there. And doing it with enviable style.

This is my first review here, and I hope you like it.