St. Johnny
Speed is Dreaming

It is not easy to buy records "sight unseen," but sometimes it becomes inevitable. The risks are considerable, among which is the desire for the presumed dream record turning out to be a dud. Clearly. So why not avoid stumbling into this unpleasant misadventure? Simple: maybe, while surfing the web, you find yourself with a clip of a stunning performance by this little-known suburban band, about which no one knows anything, and it's immediately love at first sight.

Or you involuntarily listen to a rather promising track while enjoying yourself in a cozy and well-heated place x, where you barely manage to ask a stranger y if they can help you identify the seemingly astounding band in the background there at x. In short, you start researching, the search goes well, and, blindfolded, perhaps driven by the strength of an unsuspected one-hit-wonder, you shell out fifty bucks if you're lucky, or a hundred, because the atrocity is even out of print following the "sold out" of the 2 (two) copies printed, and you only find it second-hand and only on Amazon for the exorbitant amount in question.

But let's get to the point. The day of delivery arrives, or you simply come home with full hands after a session at your (un)trusted audio retailer. As happy as the legendary Easter of '92, with a goofy expression and a hilarious temporary facial paralysis (specifically a spastic one, located in the orbicularis oris muscle), you place your disc on the player, start the playback, and this enormous package, enviable even by the national Rocco, lodges itself right in your behind.

Fortunately, with St. Johnny it went completely differently. Or rather. A while ago I happened to come across a listen of this track and the view of the related video clip. It was... not love, but a decent crush. Nothing phenomenal, but that certain something nostalgic, that last shoegaze reminiscence in the wall of sound, that pseudo-country theme (which had only the cowboy hat of Tom Leonard from country) of the lead guitar, and that worn-out and limping vocality had already carved their parts in my mind. So, despite the clumsy tackiness of the insert, I did some research and noted the title of the album on the infamous "must-have" list. I was lucky, because I found it a few months later on eBay, practically given away. Upon delivery, I was logically enthusiastic, but it lasted very little: once I listened to the hard-earned record, it seemed to be anything but what I had listened to, what I expected, or anything worth it. Even the infatuation single had worsened for the occasion. I put it aside for a while. For a while.

It's an apparently disjointed work that achieves a certain connection with the listener only after a series of careful listens, although it's neither experimental nor a difficult album.

The features that first catch the ear are undoubtedly the solid soundscapes and the monotone vocality of Bill Whitten hinting at the decay of certain pop melodies.
Definitely not the usual stylistically catalogable disc in the indie-rock environment. In fact, apart from the production handled by the band itself, it is not independent at all: it was released naught by none other than Geffen (or rather, DGC), in 1994.

Despite adhering to the more ordinary standards of the label and although in some passages a sort of burden full of irresolution is perceptible, many tracks manage to be undeniably convincing and more than pleasant: from the opening "A Car or a Boy?", a track that could easily have been composed by the Pixies of "Trompe Le Monde," to the subsequent "I Hate Rock" and "Down the Drain", marked by the typical melancholy of small dinosaurs. Or the aforementioned "I Give Up". But also from the suggestive motif of "Everything Is Beautiful", promptly supported by an iconic bass line, to the final burst of that "Stupid", which perhaps owes something to Superchunk.

In short, in brief, it is a record only apparently erratic, but actually rich in nostalgic and almost adolescent moods. All laid out on strategic guitar interplays - which find a good compromise between the British noise-rock movement and the American low-fi, developing it on a classic alternative structure - and the peculiar, worn-out melodic lines, nonchalant yet pressing and pleasantly bitter. These are the strengths of the album.

St. Johnny came from Hartford, Connecticut. They formed in 1991 and had a short life. Their first true album, after "High as a Kite" (Caroline, 1993) - which gathered all their singles up to 1993 -, was precisely this "Speed is Dreaming". A more than acceptable record, also characterized by good insights and peaks above average. Perhaps only a work for completists. Or, rather, yet another unjustly neglected album, the umpteenth suicide of rock 'n' roll.