Ovlov
AM

THE REVIEW

2013: released by Exploding in Sound Records, this is the first full-length album by Ovlov titled AM. A few months earlier, another much more famous and frequently mentioned AM was released: the one by Arctic Monkeys. While the latter was the group's acronym, the former's meaning is not clear at all to me: perhaps it's the amplitude modulation of radio transmissions or the chemical symbol for americium, it could be the acronym of ante meridiem used by English-speaking countries for the hours before noon, or the initials of anno mundi (meaning the year of the world), or probably it's A Minor in English notation. All this to say that anyone can find whatever meaning they want, and none will ever be correct. For me, without a doubt, this is the best album of 2013. Many have told me it's too derivative, that Dinosaur Jr. surfaces at every corner, that the sound walls are from the lowest songs of the passionate, that the Big Muff is there and used very crudely, here and there you can hear the Pixies or the riffs of Weezer.

I don't know who they resemble, and I don't want to know; when I put the needle on the last track of the album, I cry, not just a tear or two, but sobbing. While the song is off-kilter, the chorus and the verses are full of emotion and charge you up, but you manage to resist, you manage not to get emotionally involved. When everything seems to decline and your certainties seem to hold, everything vanishes into the noisy, incoherent, and infinite final solo, you can do nothing but let it all out and wait for the end, turn the record over and start again. Because this album reminds you of all those past records that you listen to occasionally with a bit of nostalgia, while this one you know is here now, you know it's current, you know you can play it for even the most skeptical of conservators.

One day, returning from drinks with my ex-keyboardist, I said to her, "Ah, Carmen, listen to this song, I'm sure you'll like it!" Perhaps it was the crackling speakers, the lo-fi sound of the song, the invasive wall of sound, but a few seconds after the solo, she told me, "pull over." She was sobbing too, she felt something in that sonic disaster, something intimate and personal. Maybe I'm young and couldn’t experience certain eras intensely, but the impact that this song "The Great Alligator" gives me, nothing else has ever given me in life; perhaps "Sometimes" by My Bloody Valentine, but that was another story.