The Murder Capital
Gigi's Recovery

It happened again. I started listening, somewhat distractedly, to a newly released album by a band I didn't know before, while minding my own business, but no, I progressively stopped this so-called business and just listened, in silence, over and over again.

I approach these The Murder Capital and, already from the band’s name, I understand I’m diving headfirst into something dark, gloomy, swampy, that sticks to you and never washes away. This feeling is immediately conveyed by the first track, “Existence,” a sort of one-minute intro, a gateway to hell, almost literally! Already by the second track, “Crying,” it becomes clear how The Murder Capital have the ambition to almost detach from the post-punk label, ideally associating it at the moment with the likes of Fontaines DC, allowing themselves more experimental sounds, while maintaining the “dark” approach that the genre requires. From the more “pop” track of the album, the third one, more accessible but not at all bad, we move to the small gem of the record, which is “Ethel.” It starts slow, but you immediately sense that it will explode at the end, opened by electric guitar chords and bells seemingly effected with a ring modulator that make everything dissonant and disorienting. A song of hope rising from the ashes.

These Dubliners have succeeded with this album in blending the dark style of post-punk with the freshness typical of early 2000s alternative, which often emerges, sometimes timidly, other times more forcefully, as in “A Thousand Lives,” which begins with a drum reminiscent of “Weird Fishes,” seasoned with arpeggios typical of Radiohead’s “In Rainbows,” and pairs with the subsequent “We Had To Disappear,” another not even too vaguely “Radiohead-esque” track where the frontman, James McGovern, sings “The only place to go from here / That's all we had to disappear / I made my choice / The pulsing waves that miss the moon / Will rise and fall, each day will too / I'm dancing in the waves” (Thom Yorke, get out of this body!)

The album continues with two other very interesting tracks, including the title track, “Gigi’s Recovery,” and closes with “Exist,” which brings us back to the beginning, to that “Existence,” but marks, on the contrary, a rebirth, a phoenix rising from its own ashes, a change: “New feeling revealing it / I'll stay committed, I'll make it stick / This morning took ownership / To stay forever in my own skin / Existence changing…”

With this album, it was love at first sight, whether for the Radiohead references, the particular effects well-balanced within the pieces that do not bore, and a very introspective singing. An atypical post-punk, accessible even to those starting to approach the genre coming from a more mainstream listening environment, thanks to moments with smooth and sweet corners, alternated with slightly more edgy and harsh ones. A well-assembled puzzle of colors and sensations, heterogeneous yet compact at the same time. In the end, the healing was not only meant for Gigi!