Vincent Gallo
When

I know for sure that there's at least one other review on "When" by Vincent Gallo. But I still want to say my piece. When I think of Vincent Gallo, the artist Mark Ryden and his bizarre canvases immediately come to mind; I don't know why, but in my opinion, there's a correlation, a similarity between these strange heads. And if I dwell further on his persona, frightened bunny faces come to mind, a portrait in oil of Christina Ricci (I wonder why, huh?), King Crimson's Moonchild comes to mind, a love faded over time, and a highway, with a rainbow at the end, indicating that, probably, over there, life is better than here.

I listen to that feeble, tuned voice always balanced on an invisible string, that voice so vaguely akin to a Jeff Buckley (though with a few less vocal tones!) and I think he's really good, this actor who sings. But he's also good at directing movies, this actor who is good at singing. But let's get back to the sounds of When.

The album opens with four minutes of a sax trapped in a mellifluous loop: the track is dedicated to a girl who, probably after a night of sex in Paris, Vincent never saw again, and this is the consolation prize, but without sung words. "When" arrives immediately afterward: another 4 minutes or so of abundant and dragging melancholy, a song that conveys alienation, and makes one perceive an inner unease. With the third and fourth track, we return to the instrumental, always very ambient, always music that somehow "warms up," and whispers something pleasant to you, I define it as "soft music for chatting in the living room with low lights while it rains and it's cold outside".
The album continues with the equally delicate and almost soporific "Honey Bunny," "Laura" and on, more or less at the same intensity, the penultimate is "Yes I’m Lonely" and it is, in my opinion, the most beautiful song on this album.

Overall, it still seems like a good album to me, quite refined and, certainly, for fine palates, a kind of album for the "few" and perhaps a bit snobbish, yet still a nice album overall. In any case, Vincent plays the guitar well, although, throughout the album, he never uses it virtuously, so to speak. It should also be said that, considering the previous musical experiences of some well-known faces in American cinema, Gallo at least rises far above his colleagues, without a shadow of a doubt. It is an album I recommend listening to, however, beyond any judgment Vincent Gallo might evoke in the other roles he plays in his life.