Erland & The Carnival
Nightingale

I'm built this way, the more something is labeled and debated, the less I feel inclined to listen to it and delve into it; betting blindly on an album or an artist about whom you know practically nothing is always a risk, yet it is precisely this way that I've discovered many characters that later became my favorites: with a simple act of faith, based on a title, some brief and vague biographical notes, no more than a couple of scattered songs, in some cases even through a cover by someone else whom I might have discovered through a similar process, in this specific case a Donovan poster featuring on the cover. When drawing from the deck you find something even just beautiful and pleasing, it's always a great satisfaction; it's worth taking a few missteps, believe me, because the satisfaction in the case of a positive bet is far greater and gratifying.

Erland And The Carnival are one of my successful intuitions, a London band whose main members can boast a substantial musical career before founding this project, whose first self-titled album dates back to 2010: guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Simon Tong was part of the Verve and later joined Damon Albarn first in Blur and then in the Gorillaz, drummer David Nock is a long-standing appreciated sound engineer, while for singer Gawain Erland Cooper, the Carnival represented the first real recording experience. However, the presence of "seasoned" elements is immediately noticeable in the overall character of "Nightingale", the group’s second release dated 2011, simply because the album's sound is very mature and personal, a well-defined style that can only be a product of experience. Let's forget that "britpop" label that could easily be attached based on superficial evaluations; "Nightingale" offers a sophisticated and complex fusion of British rock, folk atmospheres, and electronic sound textures of new wave descent. This album is very particular, not easy to appreciate in a short time; it certainly doesn't have a sunny sound but it's not too dark either. Let's say the scenarios it evokes are like being wrapped in a layer of fog, a sensation of constant but not too intense coldness, very consistent with the evocative setting in which the album was recorded, namely a barge anchored on the Thames. An introspective and introverted album without ever being heavy or cloying, this "Nightingale", but it knows how to deliver powerful, clear, and effective melodic sparks from the first listen, primarily "I'm Not Really Here", a highly refined electronic pop with a perfect chorus, the restless ride of "This Night", halfway between London fogs and a Morricone-esque far west, and the initial one-two punch that proposes sounds much more rock compared to the rest of the album, especially the atmospheric and fascinating "So Tired In The Morning", boasting a riff that would make Ray Davies happy and elegant vintage keyboard phrases, while "Map Of An Englishman" appears a little less sophisticated and more beat-oriented, always with the Kinks as a reference point.

The glue that holds the album emotionally, permeating it at every single moment, is undoubtedly melancholy, not fake, not saccharine, not unnecessarily ostentatious and amplified, simply present, in the new wave mantra of "Emmeline", in the restless and lost progression of a leaden title track, in the psychedelic suggestions of the bewildering "Dream Of The Road", in the bittersweet ballad "Nothing Can Remain". In this delicate emotional turmoil, "East & West" stands out particularly, as if it came directly from Donovan's "Sutras", a perfect blend of acoustic folk and very enveloping and minimal electronics, expressing distant, oriental, spiritual, and meditative sounds, a small bracket of light, faint but bright, irradiating from afar the misty paths ventured by "Nightingale"; a perfect album for the autumn season, where analog and digital sounds coexist harmoniously, where sophistication does not mean arrogance and empty exercise of style but rather a coherent and painstaking work of heart and mind, the art of perfectly matching music and words, rereading ancient traditions with new eyes. A decidedly uncommercial product, certainly not the kind of album to listen to hastily or too often, but what is definitely not lacking is soul, and in a mess of cheap pseudo-alternative music, a refined work of art like this stands out enormously and deserves all possible praise from those who can still appreciate artisanal quality applied to pop music, for everything else there are Bloc Party and Arctic Monkeys.