Marc Almond
Heart on Snow

In small but inexorable steps, autumn is reaching its full splendor; lower temperatures, soft light, and shorter days, trees already showing yellowed leaves, soon destined to fall. It might be one of my many quirks, but I've always had a particular affinity for this time of year; the cold doesn't bother me at all, there's grapes and chestnuts, the colors and atmospheres of a season of transition, of decadence but above all of change. Autumn is the perfect season to fully appreciate an album like this, much more than the cold and still winter in my opinion, because it may well be called "Heart On Snow" but it overflows with passion, it's a forest aflame with yellow and orange leaves more than a white and silent blanket of snow.

For Marc Almond, this album marked a rebirth and the opening of completely new musical horizons; a couple of years earlier, he had released "Stranger Things," an album lacking in ideas, weak and uninspired, which for any other artist less eclectic and visionary would have been a definitive requiem. But Marc understood perfectly that to move forward, a sudden change was needed, and so "Heart On Snow" was born. Like its polar opposite, Kirsty MacColl's "Tropical Brainstorm," this too is an album born from a profound cultural knowledge and identification. Marc Almond spends long periods of his life in Moscow; he knows the music, the style, the culture of that complex, fascinating, and contrasting country. This is an extremely important peculiarity that makes this ambitious and monumental album perfectly credible, intense, and exciting, perhaps a bit too monumental as I will explain later.

"Heart On Snow" alternates between covers and original productions, but as proof of the previous statement, for someone unfamiliar with Russian folk tradition, it's almost impossible to notice the difference. The stylistic characteristic is certainly the variety and multiple nuances of the sound; intense and passionate moments, others more nuanced and airy, imposing and iconic melodies alternated with crooner improvisations and beautiful, intense torch songs that take your breath away. The voice certainly needs no introduction, and in this context, it moves with the same naturalness and majesty as an eagle in flight; mournful and solemn, accompanied by baritone and statuesque choirs in the emblematic "So Long The Path (So Wide The Field)", poignant, bitterly sweet in the tragic but suffused and delicate poetry of "Gosudaryunia", confidential and charismatic, with the usual immense class of a born chansonnier in the acoustic "Two Guitars". An album full of poetic and elegant melancholy, always measured with the most impeccable style, never pointless or an end in itself, and this translates into many, many chills, those of the short and intense serenade "Nuit De Noel", sehnsucht chills in a love ballad from another time like "Romance", painful chills in "The Storks", a poetic orchestral elegy.

Episodes like "Oh, My Soul" and "Luna", duets with Russian singers accompanied by a brilliant and sly piano, add a touch of crooner elegance, helping to tone down an otherwise a bit too "loaded" atmosphere, as do the compelling, majestic and timeless rhythms of the iconic title track "Heart On Snow". After all, balance is one of the fundamental components that make this album great. Some might think of something pompous and over-arranged, but HOS is not at all; if it sounds so regal and majestic, it's only because of the beauty of the melodies, Marc Almond's charisma, and especially because everything is in its rightful place. The use of orchestral elements is sparing, limited to specific episodes, mostly dominated by piano, balalaika, and other acoustic string instruments, with synthesizers as a backdrop. The highest example of this sublime stylistic taste is "Strange Feeling", one of the most powerful songs I've ever come across, surely one of the highest points of the long career of the English artist; a whirlwind of spleen and sensuality, striking with a truly unique evocative and imaginative force, of absolute perfection.

Unfortunately, "Heart On Snow" is also a missed masterpiece of astonishing proportions or, rather, a masterpiece fully achieved and then watered down in the attempt to surpass it: considering the first eleven songs, it would surely be one of my life albums, a marvel worthy of a perfect 10, yet there are eighteen songs, and from the twelfth track onward, the intensity drops, the musical discourse ceases to evolve, and an evident stagnation is perceived, although mitigated by excellent flashes like the elegant and muffled "White Flowers Of Acacia" and "Sleeping Beauty", decadent and twilight. Unfortunately, this tendency toward prolixity is a chronic flaw of Marc Almond from '96 onwards, which I've also noticed in albums like "Varietè", "Orpheus In Exile" and "Stardom Road", and here it manifests in a particularly acute form, forcing me to unfortunately resize my overall assessment of the work: it is four stars but with great regret; they could have, indeed, should have been five.