Envy
Recitation

A YouTube video was the catalyst for my anticipation. When I saw it, I was about to collapse. A young woman, with Oriental features and a face hiding an arcane melancholy, whispered words in Japanese. In the middle, there were clips of a song video (which I later found out to be “Worn Heels And The Hands We Hold”). The new Envy album was finished, completed, recorded. It was about to be released. Fantastic, I thought.

Now, I realize that this review might mislead the reader or at least be misunderstood. To avoid this, it must be started from a simple assumption: I am a die-hard fan of Envy. I've lost count of how many times I've listened to albums like “A Dead Sinking Story”, “All The Footprints…”, “The Eyes Of Singles Eared Prophet”, and even “Insomniac Doze”, which made me dream on several occasions. Therefore, saying that “Recitation” left a subtle bitterness in my mouth does not mean that I want to devalue this work in any way; after all, the final rating speaks for itself. It simply means that I was expecting something… different. But I will talk about this at the end of the review.
“Insomniac Doze”, they said. The album released in 2006 by the Japanese combo significantly shifted the edges of their sound toward a post-rock that only sometimes recalled their screamo origins, and anyway more in sensitivity than in sound. No more violence and desperate songs, shot like bullets to the heart. That album was the true watershed between the “old” and “new” Envy, and it's necessary to start here to understand how “Recitation” continues the path already begun 4 years ago.

The new Envy prevails, then. Yet something has changed here. It has evolved, more than anything. It’s as if they wanted to forge a compromise, a blood pact between their two strongest, albeit contradictory, currents: on one side a deep and felt drama, which sometimes touches the epicness, and on the other, a compositional sweetness bordering on the ambient lyricism of famous post-rock acts like Mono, Ef, Explosions In The Sky.
The trailer was just an appetizer for the album, and we find this in the opener “Guidance”. Ethereal, delicate (perhaps too much so). And here everything becomes clear and lucid: no more violence and despair. Envy now wants to explore a new soul: the sweeter, more intimate one. And thus “Last Hours Of Eternity” is a ballad in eternity, a wave of post-rock melody that closely recalls their Eastern colleagues Mono and their modus operandi. Its soft spirals introduce one of the album's highlights, “Rain Clouds Running In A Holy Night”, with a bassline moving agilely between ambient territories and then introducing the guitar distortions. It’s a song I will never tire of listening to: overwhelming, beautiful. An emotional attack as only they could write it, but taking more inspiration from the American school. Yet I don't agree with its final part, a ride that in my view breaks the dreamy atmosphere that had been created. In any case, the song is a good starting point to understand the stylistic shift undertaken by Envy; even “Dreams Coming To An End” proceeds in this direction, emphasizing the more “emo” aspect of the group and the desire to appear much more “romantic” and sensitive than they were previously. Great melodies and engaging riffs, but no lyricism. For this, we'll have to wait for “Worn Heels And The Hands We Hold”, introduced by the delightful acoustic arpeggio “Incomplete”. It could be defined as the album's main course, and not for nothing, a video was made for it. Powerful, lyrical, passionate. A song that doesn’t reach the emotional levels of past compositions, yet manages to tear a few pieces of our heart apart, wrapping us in a tormented vortex of emotions that rises almost to self-harm and auto-citation. The Japanese poems recited by Fugakawa's voice at the end of the song fully declare the “poetic” intent that the group wanted to undertake with this song (particularly representative), and with the album in general. Fantastic, I said. And yet... It’s still not a masterpiece. Its accelerations leave you overwhelmed, and its atmospheres envelop, but that magical spark I found in songs like “Chain Wandering Deeply” isn’t here. It’s different.

Conversely, this spiritual elevation is attenuated by other moments closer to a simple ambient taste, like in “Light And Solitude”, with atmospheres reminiscent of Giardini di Mirò's post-rock, supported by a litany of almost “Christmas-like” sounds, which I could easily see as the soundtrack for the more emotional moments of some manga. In other moments, however, that explosion resurfaces, as in “Pieces Of The Moon I Weaved”, more properly “envyana” in its melodies and intentions.
Now, in short, the album's intent is clear. The subsequent “A Hint And Capacity” only confirms it, with strokes of post-rock that couldn’t be more ambient, yet supported by that typical drama of theirs which becomes softer, more subdued, more delicate for the occasion (broken, of course, by heavy guitars as the song reaches its crescendo). Yet at this point, I no longer feel the same emotional charge. It’s as if the group were a little too sure of their techniques and insisted on the same points without seeking alternative solutions to break the continuity of the piece in some way.

“Recitation” flows smoothly; it's a single, sweet journey, but its linearity in the long run almost becomes tiring. “A Bred Clad In Happiness” offers a breather, with beautiful sustained melodies that then emerge in an emotional attack worthy of their talent. Yet, I repeat, no matter how wonderful these tracks are, they don’t convince as those on previous albums did. Too much insistence on those loops, on those melodies trying to recreate the same effect over and over.
But what can I say? I still love these melodies, and even if they leave me slightly more indifferent than those of the previous albums, my eyes still get a bit teary. I almost had the impression that if I had listened to this album without knowing Envy at all, I would have considered it an unparalleled masterpiece, full of sentiment, emotion, and mysticism. And instead, it’s precisely my love for the group that paradoxically prevents me from fully enjoying it .

So, what to deduce as a conclusion? From a certain point of view, this “compromise” between two extremes (epic drama and sweet lyricism, setting aside the violence of the beginnings) was an intelligent choice; what didn’t convince me was rather “the way” this idea was converted onto the album.  In other words, as much as I enjoyed listening to this album, I couldn’t help but notice some stylistic flaws that prevented me from completely abandoning myself to it. Some of its parts don’t appear 100% inspired, as in previous albums, but rather at 80%. It’s as if they had some brilliant ideas, as might be expected, but didn’t develop them to the best of their abilities, sometimes leaving them in a “limbo” of melodies that, while beautiful, don’t have the same emotional strength as those surrounding them in the same piece. The tracks, in short, almost entirely excite. It’s that “almost” that’s the problem: the Japanese develop fantastic ideas, blend epicity, melody, and compositional lyricism, but they seem not to always have the same inspiration necessary to complete the compositions, which then see the appearance of solutions that are too simplistic and much less inspired compared to the extremely notable average in Envy's music.

“Recitation” is a splendid album (as expected), let's clear up any doubts. It has all the right elements to be the worthy successor of “Insomniac Doze”. But it is NOT the masterpiece that I, as a die-hard fan, had been waiting for. That’s what left me disappointed. I hoped to “surpass” the 5 of “A Dead Sinking Story” and instead I must settle for a “simple” 4.5 (which Debaser forces me to round down, damn it). Someone at this point will say (rightly) “who cares”. Well, I say it too. “Recitation” will remain in my player for a long time, and Envy's compositional ability is beyond question, it’s enormously above the average of many screamo/post-rock groups that unsuccessfully try to imitate them. However, those intuitions, that genius, that eternal “spark” that had made some old compositions milestones in the history of Japanese screamo, are not present this time. Predictable, since the band has been on the scene for years.

Nevertheless, I repeat, who cares. “Recitation” is a great album. And it doesn't matter if it’s not Envy's masterpiece, and if its quality may seem a bit inferior to previous albums. The bitterness in your mouth will only be felt if you're among that small circle of lovers of the Japanese group, like myself. Everyone else will instead have in their hands an album that will be able to warm their hearts and souls for a very long time.
Anyway, fantastic album and HIGHLY recommended to everyone.
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