Rome
HALL OF THATCH

New release for Rome by the bard Jerome Reuter: the Luxembourgish musician rarely misses a beat. Certainly not all of his work stays at excellent levels but it always remains dignified. The times of the neo-folk and martial sounds of the first albums – those of “Confessions d’un voleur d’ames” and “Masse Mensch Material” – now seem distant: Jerome Reuter has increasingly become a sort of “chansonnier” in black closer to Leonard Cohen than to Death In June, a transformation that started already with “Flowers From Exile” – one of his albums that I loved the most – dedicated to the theme of the Spanish civil war – and “Nos Chants Perdus.” In reality, however, he had the merit not to confine himself to a predefined and static formula – I think of the latest Death In June – and indeed, on more than one occasion, he demonstrated a certain eclecticism: just think of an album like “Hate Us And See If We Mind” from 2013 where he even approached the early Current 93 or “The Hyperion Machine”, very close to new wave sounds. Now it's time for the new “Hall Of Thatch,” conceived during a trip to Vietnam, which is on the intimate lines of “Hell Money” from 2012 and “A Passage To Rhodesia” from 2014, that is to say songs for voice and acoustic guitar but not only, as we will see. The opening “Blighter” is immediately a small classic in the Rome style, epic and convincing just right. The following “Nurser” is a delicate ballad characterized by the melancholic sounds of keyboards and piano, while “Hunter” is very dark and apocalyptic and shows us its darker side. “Slaver” is another melancholic fresco sketched by the acoustic guitar and precedes the real surprise of the album, which is “Martyr”: we are facing a devastating piece, with a hard and heavy electric guitar as never before heard with Rome and not far from certain experimental and noise things by the Swans. In “Hawker,” we find recordings of sounds recorded in Vietnam that precede another classic ballad for keyboards and acoustic guitar, followed by the sinuous “Prayer.” “Keeper” is instead an intense song with desolate atmospheres. The closing is entrusted to the touching “Clemency,” a track in which we can hear Reuter’s voice suffering and hoarse like rarely before. Ultimately “Hall Of Thatch” confirms Rome as the last credible heir of the so-called neo-folk.