Rosolina Mar
Before and after dinner

Uh-oh! We've been informed that this review also appears (in whole or in part) on sentireascoltare.com

It's the body that sings.

For once, let's start from the track-list: 1 Sunday morning the blessing of tractors 2 Protopapetti 3 Mingozo di mongozo 4 Religion hour 5 Flesh Dance 6 Before and after Dinner 7 The cult of the electric cable 8 Sea Tomato 9 Toxic love 10 Isa Eye s11 Car Patch (D-Tone) 12 Tuttopapetti. With such titles, one would expect to hear yet another humorous band like Elio and instead... surprise!! Here’s an incredibly rock and energetic album, frantic and unpredictable that hardly seems to come from an Italian band, more precisely Venetian (!). "The approach" is the common denominator, and it’s inevitable to imagine these twelve tracks as the offspring of wild and highly inspired jams (even though Rosolina Mar hasn’t completely turned its back on the post-rock from their beginnings). Here, it’s the totally physical dimension of music that counts. It’s the body that plays. Here bodies communicate and do so "together", in an ancient and simple communion that doesn’t involve prima donnas with too much or too little personality. So a single rule: NO SINGER, no prima donna paranoia, nobody scattering their answers to life in the lyrics, the words here are just twelve titles as bizarre as they are evocative.

Second effort after their excellent self-titled debut in 2003, again for Wallace (also reviewed here on DeBaser by me), this "Before And After Dinner" (a light jest at Brian Eno’s masterpiece "Before and after science") is cinematic and visceral, complex like Hendrix and tribal like Santana on the Woodstock stage, it plays with new wave referencing Franz Ferdinand and Talking Heads and revels in catchy melodies. So forget the slow and dreamy rhythms of June of 44 and the like, because the Venetian power-trio (double guitar and drums: no bass, a la Blues Explosion) has churned out a CD made of rare equilibria between classic rock and the post-attitude that characterized the first half of this decade. It starts with "Protopapetti", where the aggressive funk of Fugazi alternates with Chicago-like cadences, transforming again into infinite references, and "Mingozo di mongozo" (mongozo is an African beer, I was told backstage), all funky sinuosity and sharp due to the two guitars, lacking a bass, justified by how well it all works. A smoothie of passions, one might say, and they wouldn’t be far off, as the cauldron reveals outlines of rock declinations like indie (the wave-like cadences of "The cult of the electric cable"), college (in "Flesh Dance" one seems to hear certain less academic and buttoned-up Weezer), the hard-rock of Led Zeppelin and Ac/Dc and the deviant blues of Captain Beefheart first and of U. S. Maple later.

What to say, then, of "Toxic Love", the only possible hybrid between Dinosaur Jr. and The Police or the King Crimson-esque derivations scattered here and there. In summary: fantasy, originality, and overflowing eclecticism are not lacking, and there is much fun to be had, especially live (seen and met them in Brescia three months ago, truly wonderful and low-profile people) where the "improvisation" component always takes the lead and exchange, contributions and gags with the audience who adore them are not lacking. A great discovery and a confirmation. We eagerly await their next work (rumors have them in the presence of Steve Albini and a collaboration with the former singer of Quintorigo... we shall see!)