Olive
Extra Virgin

I don't remember if the summer of '97 was hot, cold, rainy, fun, or crappy (though I think it was the last one). I remember, however, that, in the tragic absence of better occupations, we used to bet on who would reach the first place in England between Blur and Oasis. I remember rooting for the former, and losing. Because the Olive made it to the top, coming out of nowhere with a song with a banal title ("You're Not Alone") and a decidedly un-summery sound, with a dark and muffled video, and an album called "Extra Virgin". We thought it was just something to dress a cold pasta with around here. And yet.

Eleven years later, Olive's debut still resonates, indeed, even though it fits into a stereotypical genre that, in the electronic sector of those years, was quite popular: two DJs hidden behind the scenes and a fascinating vocalist providing the voice and the face. Among acid trappings of trip-hop and drum'n'bass ingredients, between Lamb and Everything But The Girl, Moloko and Roni Size, in the vein of a shadowy and delicate electronics, among downtempo folk dressed in trip-hop and jazz references, this album definitely makes itself heard.

Ruth-Ann Boyle's voice takes on the seductive shades of Sade and lowers them into a deeper, cavernous soundscape, supported by always very airy keyboards, as was the fashion back then (listen to the seven minutes of "Miracle": a small hidden gem that would not be out of place among the dark bijoux that Massive Attack and Portishead were refining in those years). But it’s not pure electronics: there are quite a few guitar-driven tracks, frequent samples that reference jazz (here, yes, with the Portishead model in the background, especially in the concluding "I Don't Think So"), with an effect of widespread elegance and softness, aided by sinuous vocal lines, like cigarette smoke, and not always banal melodic scales.

After all, we're talking about pop: delightful "You Are Nothing", "Blood Red Tears", with the clarinet opening that makes it a nocturnal breakbeat piece, "Outlaw", a more melodic concession, "This Time", with a funky guitar. "You're Not Alone" is the song that stays in your ears, that insidiously and slowly imprints itself on you, with the same lethargy with which it begins (a minute and a half without bases, the voice accompanied by minimal refinements), leading by the hand to the chorus, supported by fragmented keyboards and Boyle's decomposed and doubled voice. Even noteworthy songs can (or could) reach the top of the charts.

"Extra Virgin" remains a minor album, a peripheral episode in the late millennium trip-hop landscape, hidden in the rearguard. But I like those kinds of records. Those that have the consolatory charm of ordinary things. Even summers in which nothing memorable happened need a mirror to look at themselves. And Olive offers one with absolute style.