Three In One Gentleman Suit
Some New Strategies

The Three In One Gentleman Suit are, fittingly, three cheerful guys from Romagna who have launched themselves into a sonic adventure in the intricate universe of Math Rock. For the adventure, the guys have packed their backpack with albums from Karate, June Of 44, and a good (perhaps excessive) dose of intellectualism. Is that enough to produce a Math Rock (or Post Rock, if you prefer) album that packs a punch? Yes and no. It's probably this dualism around which doubts and certainties about the work in question revolve.

On one hand, we have talent; on the other, derivativeness. On one hand, there are great melodies; on the other, unconvincing vocal lines. On one hand, there is a handful of excellent tracks; on the other, there are some episodes far from adding anything new to what has already been said. On one hand, there are interesting ideas; on the other, there's a whirlwind of ideas yet to be defined. They absolutely need to be defined because even in the least successful tracks ("Two Thousand Steps", "Hi Fi Burnout", and "Get Off My Plane"), there are insights of note that seem thrown into the sonic chaos, ending up forgotten among stops and starts and rhythmic harmonies. However, when Three In One Gentleman Suit decide to detach from the canonical song form and become more "winding" (I said winding, but you're free to also read Tortoise), things start to get interesting. And so they begin with "Math Rule The Squadron" based on unconventional tempos and an emotionally climactic finale dominated by wind instruments, passing through the style summa of "A Sort Of Withdrawal", reaching the noise-like madness of "Underwater, My Samba", and the schizophrenic rhythm mixed with a perfect instrumental blend of "Approach/Arrival", and closing it all with the romantic decadence of "Delikatessen", which finds its qualitative peak in the piano break placed in the central phase. Tracks of excellent caliber that, however, significantly falter in the overall context of the work, buried by some pretentious and soporific litanies masked by an intellectual approach that so wishes to make them better or interesting, but in the end, they are nothing more than a pale imitation of themselves. The inconsistency of the tracklist speaks volumes about this, making it difficult to find qualitative continuity between two consecutive tracks.

In conclusion, if the guys removed the albums of Karate or June 44 from their backpack and replaced them with some good Modenese prosciutto, their adventure (mentioned above) would undoubtedly become less arduous and more interesting. Sent back with a 2.5.