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Rating:
Only fools never change their minds. Just as the cowardly never change their path. And who knows if track number six of this new album (‘The Ballad of the Coward’) is truly an implicit message, a preemptive response to those who will cry betrayal, because certainly, if one stops at appearances, it is undeniable that there is a bit of betrayal involved. Betrayal of the sounds and the lyrical and sonic harshness that constituted, at least up to "Senza Peso," an evident trademark of Marlene.
But the word betrayal always has a negative connotation, and negative is not an adjective that can rhyme with this album, which instead makes me think of intelligence, wisdom, the courageous search for the new, but not the new at all costs, because it takes courage to call yourselves Marlene Kuntz and open ‘Musa’ with one of those unmistakable piano phrases, to adorn the end of the already mentioned, splendid, ‘Ballad of the Coward’ with triumphant strings, to smooth almost every vocal edge and sacrifice the firepower that was (but that remains unchanged and thunderous live) for the gentle curves of melody.
Already in "Bianco Sporco" a new direction was clear, which perhaps then remained unfinished, as if afraid to reveal itself without veils; in "Uno" all of this strips away any remaining rough harshness, both instrumental and lyrical, and it ends up that for the first time you listen to an entire Marlene album and instead of the angry Sonic Youth, you find Paolo Conte, the more reflective CSI, the pacified Nick Cave of "Boatman's Call" and even distant but palpable echoes of Radiohead. And it happens that instead of the angry confessions of "Vile," the dark and inconsolable melancholy of "Ho ucciso paranoia," or the invectives of "Bianco Sporco," you discover the triumph of love, not only the kind that "is born of nothing and dies of everything" until it kills (‘111’), but the kind that grabs your stomach and lights up your life like a sun, passion and tenderness that create the "racket of happiness" (‘Abbracciami’).
No, Marlene never betray.
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Other reviews
By ASSOLUTEQ9
"Marlene Kuntz can no longer be labeled as a harsh, angry group but rather a melodic rock band."
"111 is the highlight of the album; it brings back the anger of the past but expressed in a very mature way."
By PeepingTom
This album still leaves me a bit perplexed.
The result ... is inconsistent and only a few songs are saved as they are.
By GrantNicholas
"Uno touches the status of a masterpiece, unlike the controversial 'Bianco Sporco.'"
"The sonic rage of their beginnings is now channeled into the lyrical bitterness of episodes like '111.'"
By R13564274
"ONE, AN inescapable senile boredom in a latent literary sauce."
Rating: ONE
