L'altra
In The Afternoon

Few albums hit me to the heart from the first to the last minute. This one does so with an unexpected delicacy. It's a medicine, that's all. A "pill" that will make you forget daily frenzies, hysterics, tiffs, quarrels, and will cradle you with sweetness and veiled melancholy.
Just press the play button and be able to wait a few seconds: suddenly you are catapulted into bewitching and hypnotic atmospheres, almost folk guitars but above all an alternation of voices (those of Joe Costa and Lindsay Anderson) that cannot help but strike deep into the soul and leave the listener enthralled. Not forgetting the piano, clear and fluid, which creates simple yet at the same time almost unreal beauties, and the brass that enrich the sound without making it gaudy.

It is almost reductive to call this bounty post-rock and also reductive to compare this band to many names they've been associated with like Tinderstick, Spain, or Low; they remind me more of Slowdive, a group that has always intrigued, not to say bewitched, me (when I mentioned this to a friend, he called me crazy).
It is undeniable that Chicago, where they come from, has become in recent years the most vibrant scene of alternative America. Within the city, the label Aesthetics, owned by bassist and band founder Ken Dyber, has always represented a meeting point for these underground trends. More than a group, "L'altra" has revealed themselves as an ensemble open to various types of collaborations and evolutions, and with this second album from 2000, they have embarked on a new path in how they handle instruments and produce sound.

The use of the bow on the six-string bass, the Wurlitzer and the Rhodes, the return to the acoustic guitar, and the alternation of a male and female voice in each song make "In The Afternoon" an incredibly elegant and melodic album.
An album that thus stands alone in their discography also because Ken Dyber, if you can say, will disrupt the Chicago ferment of that period by leaving the group right after its release, dragging his label to Portland, where he now does DJ-sets! And this departure is indeed felt in the subsequent "Different Days" both in the arrangements and in the band's very sound, less emotional and more electronic (almost dub at times).

I can only mention perhaps the two gems of the album: "Ways Out," a delicate musical caress beautifully enriched by the cello, and "Moth In Rain," where Lindsay's seductive voice leaves us suspended mid-air despite the almost psychedelic progression of the instruments.
In short, a work that is simple and immediate only on the surface and if listened to superficially. After the CD has been in the player for a while, it literally melts even the hardest shells, slowing down the heartbeat in a sort of autogenic trance.
A miraculous "pill," the exact opposite of ecstasy in sensations but with much more addictive power.