The Pineapple Thief
Someone Here is Missing

It is 9:16 AM on August 27th and the sky is unusually clear over Passo Pordoi.
Accompanied by the usual terror for anything that lifts off the ground, I enter the cable car that, in a few minutes, will catapult me (not literally, but almost) from the pass to Sass Pordoi, the terrace of the Dolomites.
I grab the first available hand, that of the unfortunate person of the moment.
I try to anesthetize the hatred for the children who obsessively ask 'won't it fall? what if it falls?'
Screw you, in any case, you pesky little brats.
I insert the earbuds of my iPod deep into my eagerly awaiting ear canals.

The suggestion, with obvious distracting purposes, is Someone Here Is Missing, the latest album by Pineapple Thief.

* Passo Pordoi - Sass Pordoi: Nothing at best. The ascent is hard and immediate, eruptive, and masterfully aided by electronics.

* Rifugio Boè - parking area of the pass: Wake up The Dead. The panorama is priceless. The descent starts slyly, but the rhythm section becomes quite noticeable in the choruses. Final jolt.
Then we hit the ground. I let go of the stranger's hand, turn off the iPod. I move to Malga Ciapela and decide to tackle the Marmolada cable cars. I grab another unfortunate hand and squeeze it. I turn the iPod back on. I pray.

* Malga Ciapela - Antermoja: The State We're In. I must not think about that face. I love Bruce Soord, his voice, rather his voices and how they overlap in this track. "The state we're in" is: damnably suspended in mid-air. The skillful orchestration and arrangements, perfect as in the entire production, help us land at the interchange station.

* Antermoja - Serauta: Preparation for meltdown. You embark on this 7-minute journey with closed eyes, which is undoubtedly the most successful track of the album; it evokes at times the best Muse. The PT measures sweetness, harshness, and technique with lethal mastery. When I think I'm starting to fly, everything stops.

* Serauta - Marmolada Glacier: Barely Breathing. It's a sweet guitar arpeggio cradling Soord's voice, more enticing than ever, that cancels out the frigid air of over three thousand meters. The melody, the cold, and above all the view allow us to barely breathe.

* Descent from Rocca Sella: Show a Little love. I thought I could be calm. Sometimes the descent is worse than the ascent. And this track doesn't distract me enough. Noisy, yes, but it doesn't penetrate the soul.

* Serauta - Intermediate station of Antermoja - Someone Here is missing. Someone is missing here. Who do we miss? Who is missing? At times, the Pineapple Thief of the last two albums. This title track is anything but convincing. A bit like that rock outcrop. Which, in my opinion, we're heading straight for.

* Antermoja - Malga Ciapela. 3000 Days. I relax. If I haven't died so far, this track won't kill me. Electronic musings overlap with the rock faces and the sun's reflections on the snow and glass. The result is psychedelic. It is the track that most recalls the anarcho-prog Pineapple of the previous albums.
Well then. I'm on the ground. Even better.

* Solo walk - So we row.  The concluding track, the longest and most meditative, adds a big stone to this undoubtedly valuable album, but not up to the last (at least) two. There is a noticeable absence of a suite that PT has always given us (like What Have we sown?, Too much to lose) or the heavyweight tracks (West Winds, Different Worlds). The album is cohesive, pleasant, the result is remarkable, but it suffers from excessive linearity and at times lacks inspiration.

Like an ascent to three thousand meters without the sweat of the climb.