Lambchop
OH (Ohio)

How dreary the rainy days in Milan. As sad as passions that become faint, tired, so that what you hold at night is nothing but drowsiness and faded resolutions. And the sky outside doesn't encourage you; you start to think that growing old must be something like this, the fervor nullified, pulling up the blanket and simply waiting for the morning, again and again.

Kurt Wagner supports my melancholic nostalgia, nostalgia for I don't quite know what, since in summer I long for winter and in winter I long for summer. He fits so well in his role as an outsider, straddling present and past, a singer of America's yesteryears or perhaps just an imagined America, clad in the soft garb of a refined chamber pop composer. On his country palette, folk, and very light touches of jazz, all skillfully woven together with such care as to never be overbearing.

In fact, listening to his records, it seems as though nothing is happening around, that human stories are just awkward bustling to make as much noise as possible, wearing oneself out not to feel alone. They are suspended records, so slow and intangible as to appear the negative vision of modern reality.

Like in the bittersweet "Slipped Dissolved And Loosed" where there is the abyss but not the drama of the abyss, there is the non-noisy nature of a single lost man, intertwined in the sweet acoustics of a well-worn guitar and a female voice that, on tiptoe, seems to whisper that it's okay, that among a thousand stories, one is truly yours, lost in the fog where others rarely look. Here, there are no special effects, everything tastes of white wine and days spent watching droplets slide down the window, rubbing hands together in one’s warm home.

Apparently, one might speak of a work devoid of passion, occasionally discernible in the stirrings of Wagner's detached voice, which, as an experienced autumnal crooner, sketches blurred and watercolor landscapes. It is not so, it's just that nothing is thrown in your face or overemphasized as befits what wants to please, what seeks approval. This record is sincere, calibrated, essential.

One often loses oneself among these notes, like at the entrance of the sax in "Of Raymond" or in "Please Rise", and thought becomes one with the flow of the music, among harmonics, softly touched drums, and sparingly parceled out piano notes.

Ultimately, in its sorrowful and sweet being at the same time, it feeds on the pursuit, in all its simplicity, of the simple and effective chord, the balance between the elements. And a piece like "Close Up" is enough, for which I would speak of simple beauty and the beauty of simplicity, to get an idea of the album.

It's not hard to understand why a work like this has almost gone unnoticed, and I find myself talking about it a year after its release. However, I believe that everyone, from time to time, deserves such a record, beyond the sky, of Milan, and easily changeable moods.