Gentle Touch
In Memory of Savannah

What do we write about when we write a review? Why entrust words, works, and omissions to a keyboard? Captious questions, I admit, but as I listen to "In Memory of Savannah" by Gentle Touch, I can't help but wonder.

I could keep its secret, savor the listens and relish my sensitivity. What's the point in engaging in vulgarizations, the world won't listen, as we know.

But I am also an intelligent being, equipped with an opposable thumb, and I must exercise some form of sociality. The review, precisely. Which is to writing what masturbation is to sex, but so be it. And not so much to share or, worse, spread knowledge; reviewing is above all a mere expedient to assert a hypothetical "artistic self," otherwise denied.

Let's come out, dear onanistic colleagues: the review is for us an oracle from which to draw vanity instead of truth, the simple act of greasing the net to see what effect it has, an often annoying pandering for sympathies that crystallizes our solipsism into pseudo-literary secretions,

This is what we like to do, victims of a pandemic perversion: linger in the distorted mirror of frustrated ambitions.

Because no conversion of mine to critical orthodoxy, like no mea culpa, will ever illuminate you on the path that delivers the Swedish Gentle Touch to the recent history of indie: relating with words and works how the 80s synth pop was sublimated last year into the (forgive the pun...) sublime "In Memory of Savannah" is, as the theorem of the uncle preaches, as useless and impossible as dancing architecture.

Thus, I could mention Depeche Mode, New Order, The Wake period "Here Comes Everybody", Joy Electric, just to complete the easy assignment; but I would only follow what has already been written elsewhere, I would obtain a compendium of obviousness, a sterile package insert and I wouldn't be able to as I would like to neither magnify Gentle Touch nor justify the panegyric that "In Memory of Savannah" deserves.

I delude myself instead of succeeding with this vain and verbose annotation, however convoluted and soaked with omissions, with the intent of sharing not only the emotions returned to me from listening but above all to stimulate the vibrations of the aura of the pop martyr, to refine the electiveness that unites us in tastes and fosters the right attitude, which leads us to walk with our heads high and hands in our pockets through the streets of our city, to exchange curious glances with absent eyes, inches above the pavement, custodians of the word of beauty unknown to most. Poor them.

"In Memory of Savannah" is not a desert island record, it's much more: it is a distinctive mark, a badge at the heart, the cognitive dissonance of the moments when one experiences that superiority, justified and priceless.

Because we're worth it.