The Czars
Before... But Longer

A record shouldn’t be reviewed if it clings to your memory like an octopus to a rock, the kind you listen to again that tears open your heart; it shouldn't be done, it's not honest. Ok, let's do this, I won't rate it, just a couple of chats, one and two.

The distant 1999, discussions over a beer, and a more endless time than now. One of those music talks, about albums, to be precise. We talked about the opening of albums, the best "first tracks." I was emerging from the haze, just in time to express my opinion (I had a ubiquitous Kyuss and a surprising Miles Davis up my sleeve), but I was beaten to it by a much more cosmopolitan reference from a buddy returning from London: do you know The Czars? He pronounced it the American way, like Caesars. It was a plot twist, and a cheap shot too. "Before but Longer", would indeed be released in Italy only a year later. That's when I made it mine.
Since this is not a review, let me tell you that it all started in the underbelly of Denver, around the narcotic voice of John Grant, the inspired bass of Chris Pearson, and the soul of Buckley senior (celebrated by a splendid cover of "Song to the Siren" a few years later, but that's another story). In short, The Czars, the Czars, or the Caesars, it's all the same.

I'll write even less about "Before but Longer". To give an idea, I'll evoke the adjective "dreamlike", which would have no reason to exist if it weren't paired with this album (I wonder, in fact, what it was doing in dictionaries pre-1998). The acoustic depth is profound, the tones abyssal, the melodies aerial, magically extracted from that shapeless magma that potentially contains all art.

Something more: it was true, the first tracks, "Val" and "Concentrate" are truly magnificent, but so is the rest. A wash of sounds, surfacing and slipping away from memory, that's how it goes, it seems.