Kyrie
Le Meccaniche del Quinto

KYRIE – "THE MECHANICS OF THE FIFTH"

Kyrie is a Milanese band with long-standing experience and time spent in the metropolitan underground circuit. This album (from 2004), the first – and so far only, as far as I know – not self-produced, thus represents an anthology of their previous work, with the addition of some unreleased tracks, for a total of 10 tracks.

I remember hearing them for the first time in Milan several years ago, and they didn't particularly impress me. I stumbled upon them again in 2004, playing once more in Milan, at Transilvania Live, near the San Siro stadium. I didn't like them much even then, however, my (now ex) girlfriend, Claudia, appreciated them. So much so that ever since, I had to endure them almost every time they played in our area. Well, in the studio, alas, they are not better than live. From a purely musical standpoint, they actually hold their own quite well, perhaps one can catch a bit too much influence from The Cure and Joy Division, which are clear references for the band.

What I really can't stand is that the album is entirely sung in falsetto, and by the third track I'm already fed up, let alone an entire album. The lyrics also irritate me: they generally seem rather pretentious, like “Lipsia 1933,” about Majorana's stay in Germany (never mentioned directly, but evidently, those who listen to Kyrie should know who wrote in his letters "of uniforms of the regime, / of theories of nuclei, of Austrian women / and chess games locked in the library with Heisemberg"), or the Mann quote in “Decadenze” (“It is Venice dying with the face of Aschenbach: / the normal different the nostalgic stranger ”). The pinnacle of what frankly appears an empty display of culture perhaps is in “Ritiro estivo”: “I read in William Butler Yeats about Emmanuel Swedemborg / bold visionary experienced traveler among planets, / and in an art history essay the theories of Brunelleschi.”

For heaven’s sake, I appreciate cultured people, but I detest those who make their culture weigh on you, unnecessarily stuffing their mouths with names and quotes: if you want to tell me something, and if you write an album you evidently do, tell me, don't hide it beneath cryptic allusions and references. Otherwise, I might think that perhaps you have nothing to say. And if all that reading and studying leads you to forge verses like "All my cyclical thoughts are demeaning into divinity" (the beginning of “What I Don't See”), you end up getting on my nerves. To tell the truth, not everything is to be thrown away: “Caffè viennese” is pleasant; “Nimloth Kirloth,” inspired by Tolkien, is very sweet; "The Machine Man" is valid.

Summing up, perhaps a 2 would be more appropriate, but since I know the singer, he gets on my nerves, and now Claudia is with him, I'm not giving him more than 1.