Sneaker Pimps
Splinter

Saturday Afternoon (and don't bring up Baglioni) and West Ham is drawing in Portsmouth, boring match, I could even turn off the TV and head outside since this Autumn just hours before the Return to Standard Time is gifting us with a Strange Spring..
Yes, but today I don't feel like being bright and optimistic, for heaven's sake... certainly the way the Hammers are playing doesn't really encourage me to stay home... well, I could finish "11/9, The Impossible Conspiracy" but I don't feel like reading... let's find a record...

I don't know about you, but when I’m in these moments I become a bit like Muhammad and the Mountain, so without much effort in my hands I come across "Splinter" by the Sneaker Pimps... Speak of the devil...
... indeed, what could be more fitting in these moments than the Hymn to the Spleen by Corner & Co.?

Strange Group, the Sneaker Pimps, so introspective and so commercial... so light and so deep (and I'll spare you more Wenders-like quotes...), a band that has never managed to remain unscathed from the Trippy label that too many superficially pinned on them but perhaps brought some money too, allowing the leader, Chris Corner, a golden exile in Belgian Land to produce electro-eighties reminiscences (IAMX).

But I don't want to stay too much on the biography since lately I've already bored you enough, so for more information I refer you to my previous Review.

"Splinter" then...

The Album was born in '99 and personally I consider it (and not only chronologically) as the sunset of that decade, which you must have realized by now, I particularly revere. Sunset because "Splinter" represents that connection and coexistence between electronic sounds and acoustic elements that throughout the decade was the cross and the delight of those who experienced, yes, a crush for Synthetic Music, while also seeking that warmth only the naturalness of a traditional instrument can give (the debate on whether the Computer can be considered a real instrument never particularly touched me...).

Furthermore, a major element to consider are the barely hidden influences of Corner & Co., making it impossible not to notice that in their youth these gentlemen listened extensively to groups like Joy Division, New Order, Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins and early Tears For Fears, therefore the long wave of the fusion between Dark, New Wave, and early '80s Electronics appears here in its utmost splendor (although the bright metaphor might clash with the underlying gloom of all the genres listed).

"Half Life", the opening track eloquently speaks of this entire world just described, which the Sneaker Pimps carry as a faithful travel companion and introduces the painful and melancholic state that the four Englishmen, unfazed by being taken for incurable depressives, wisely but inevitably dose in every piece (except for the excessively radio-friendly Single, "Low Five").

The Record, then, is a journey into an electronic world that, despite having all the aptitudes, never even by chance brushes atmospheres even vaguely Dance and, indeed, ventures into the dark paths of a Dark Wave that never leaves the listener "calm" but with the usual sonic elegance that characterized almost all the English electro-music of that Period, blending, sweet acoustic guitar chords with the syncopated rhythms of Drum Machines, all "fluttering" among layers of elegant electric keyboards ("Destroying Angel" and the Title Track are the peaks.)

Thus, as you allow yourself to listen, the thin but beautifully dramatic voice of Corner, takes and entangles you in a gelatinous layer of never disturbing pulsations, but, equally extremely intense, is the Spleen (yes, I know, I'm overusing the word, allow me...). Ladies and gentlemen, it's the Spleen... indeed it's "Splinter"...

P.S: oh, in the end, West Ham drew...