Rome
Flowers From Exile

Having reached his fourth album in three years, Jerome Reuter confirms himself as the most credible figure in today's neo-folk scene. So much so that, after the excellent effort of last year (the formidable "Masse Mensch Material"), the young Luxembourger not only shows no signs of artistic decline despite his furious prolificacy, but he even comes forward with what is probably, to date, his masterpiece.

The shadow of Douglas P., more than twenty years after the genre's birth, remains long and looming, yet Jerome Reuter is capable of raising his humble little head with dignity and authority. This is because over the years, he has been able to define and refine his own artistic identity: a little dwarf who, yes, with "Nera" took his first steps supported by the strong arms of Death in June and Der Blutharsch; who, yes, with "Confessions d'un Voleur d'Ames" was not yet able to emancipate from the typical Central European smoky settings of the genre; who, yes, with "Masse Mensch Material" reiterated, albeit with significant contaminations, twenty-year-old stylistic features; but who has progressively been able to anchor more massively to similarly strong shoulders of giants like Leonard Cohen (above all), Nick Cave, and Tom Waits, until achieving the definitive intimate shift with "Flowers from Exile", his most properly singer-songwriter album. The album, we might add, of full maturity.

Strengthened by a cohesive band featuring the fundamental contribution of multi-instrumentalist Patrick Damiani (guitars, cello, bass, drums, and keyboards) and the inspired violinist Nikos Mavridis, Reuter further focuses his view, narrows the boundaries of a melting pot that has made his fortune, and escapes from any temptation of stylistic heterogeneity that had until the day before characterized his extremely derivative artistic conception, for better or for worse.

Definitively purged of industrial harshness (to testify to the stern past we find only the sampled voices that still provide a notable condiment to Reuter's sparse ballads), this new 2009 work presents itself to our ears as a desolate folk-singer-songwriter jewel that only at times is possessed by ancient pearcian ghosts (indispensable!). The shadow of Pearce is long and looming, it was said, but beyond that, the pale Spanish sun shines: opened and closed by the melancholic oscillation of sea waves, "Flowers from Exile" is a concept album about the Spanish Civil War, drawing inspiration from the diaries, memories, and testimonies of the protagonists of those same events: a pretext, in truth, to stage the typical themes of the artist, those of exile, existential uprooting, solitude, both physical and intellectual.

A heartfelt ode to the broken values of a Europe photographed at its sunset by a restless soul ("The Record is for you, our partners in grief", partners in grief, reads the dedication Reuter addresses to his fans), the flowers sent from exile by the young artist narrate and testify to a fierce inner struggle, aimed at defending one's integrity in a cannibalistic and invertebrate world where flesh and nerves are torn apart, but behind the flesh and nerves, a heart continues to beat, a cracked and passionate humanity continues to vegetate. The road thus tints in the colors of the sun-scorched earth, but also of the blood and tears that furrow the entire artistic epic of Reuter.

The mark of Ours is evident from the very first moments of the album, when a hoarse and distant voice recites verses in Spanish (the intro "To a Generation of Destroyers"): the scenario changes, Reuter's desperate song animates with Latin suggestions, but the poetic vein, desolate and deeply tragic, is the same as always. Not that there is no room for significant novelties: but the shoegaze/post-rock guitar phrases of the driving opener "The Accidents of Gesture", the flamenco-like guitars of "The Secrets of Sons of Europe", the dark-wave stride of the imposing "A Legacy of Unrest" pass almost unnoticed: elements absorbed by the absolute rigor of a path that unfolds through intense acoustic gems and various interludes, in turn grouped into four sections that mark a thematic concept consistent and clear in its progression (consistency that we also find at an iconographic level, browsing through the booklet dotted with suggestive vintage photos).

More than in the past, the guitar and Reuter's deep and baritone voice predominate (a sort of gothic Waits, a Cohen on the brink of putrefaction, a derelict and exhausted Cave): the remarkable work of the two companions completes and refines a path that, impeccable from a formal point of view, the singer-songwriter walks alone, in essence, without falling into self-indulgence, arm in arm, at most, with his ghosts, at times quoting the repertoire of the unmatched Cohen (think of the title-track), at times brushing the solemnity and dramatic flair typical of apocalyptic folk: a path that, however, is read through the lens of an artist who is finally able to break free from the clichés inherited from the genre, not inventing anything new, looking rather to the past, but always affirming the solidity of an artistic identity now undeniable.

One hundred of these albums, Jerome!