Run On
Start Packing

We are in New York, a city bustling with cultural initiatives and musical innovations, and if progressive music spread little in America because it was too "cultured," perhaps New York is the city that embraced it most happily.

The Run On was formed precisely by musicians coming from these intellectual bands of the Big Apple, yet they managed to merge this European trend with the rawer (with no disdain, quite the opposite) typical USA style. The album in question dates back to 1996 and is made even more original with the singing of the talented and warm Sue Garner. Their compositions do not have a precise form but evolve from within, often starting with a few timid chords that grow with a life of their own, thus never tiring the listener.

The tracks touch on various genres, moving from the languid guitar phrases of the melody in "A to Z" to the unpredictable and wilder "Tried," with a beautiful guitar riff; it also ventures into noise with "Miscalculation" and the new wave of "Xmas Trip," at other times it seems to return to the psychedelia of the '60s like, for example, "Coffee," à la Jefferson Airplane; but every song is filtered through a typically decadent taste, that urban decadence reminiscent of the Velvet Underground. Despite all these nods, the work remains very original because it manages to harmoniously blend everything together without falling into stereotypes and excesses, revisiting decades of rock music and reinterpreting it for the '90s generation. The album gloriously ends with the long "Surprise" where it always seems like something is about to happen but it dies slowly, hypnotic and poetic, summarizing all their absurdity and techniques. The songs are made even more eccentric by the inclusion of instruments like trumpets, accordions, and xylophones here and there, rendering the tracks independent of each other.

Cultured, aggressive, psychedelic, noisy, and melodic, 'Start Packing' remains one of the best albums of the nineties that is certainly worth listening to and cherishing.