While Italy Dreamed...Through The Summers Of Haze is the second album by mainly Auzzie supergroup Speed Of The Stars who are fronted by the inimitable Steve Kilbey from The Church alongside Cactus World News' Frank Kearns once again Models Barton Price is along for the ride and they have added Hugo Race to the mix, as both band member and producer. At Hugo's suggestion the album was recorded at The Puccini Floating Music Academy on a boat on Torre Del Lago just outside of Pisa in Italy. The album was engineered by Nicola Baronti and Simone Sandrucci and mixed by Ted Howard and is a love letter to Italy.
The album opens with a rather spaced-out Line Check that also proves the albums stereo spatiality. Inglish is slow thoughtful questioning of a wayfaring stranger, as to if they speak ah da Inglish or not, an if so can they give you directions, to find a way to be as laid back as the music is, not getting all angry and pointlessly patriotic.
Alluvial Groove tries to have a similar groove to a river, cool as a cucumber, slow strummed acoustic guitar and the feelings and thoughts about how the river has changed since that woman went down to that stream. The river slowly moves downstream becoming ever more orchestral.
Now U See It then before you even blink it's gone in a wave of strings, this feels like you should be slowly swaying along with them, while the strings form a sort of lakebed for the squelchy percussion helping to accentuate the vocals with a very sing along chorus.
Prosecco On Ice I do hope they mean the bottle sitting in a bucket and they haven't polluted the Prosecco with cubes of ice, they don't sound like heathens, while urging us to listen to our mothers advice.
Mr Bellini is in love with classical sculpture, while dressed like you are an extra in Death In Venice, the hushed voices an sepulchral backing, complete with bird calls and unusual shaken elements, stop this from being frozen in marble.
An Imagined Child a slight figure emerging from a distant world in a long-forgotten art gallery, this has a dream-like quality that is very relaxing, conjuring up the image of that Imagined Child and what his life might be like.
Incident In Torino opens like they are re-working an old Hamlet advert, before the action begins in a bed, where you lost all your inhibition and sense of reality, things get weird and you may need to find an old school Italian detective to sort things out for you.
Sheol is Avant Garde atmospherics with arabesque touches, when the vocals come in it is like the opening to a very dark spaghetti western, I was waiting for Franco Nero to stroll by menacingly.
Tragedy is mourning the loss of places to play and perform, with comic voices and the best bassline on the album that drives everything on. Whatever you do don't get yourself deported for saying the wrong thing to the wrong person, times have changed and not for the better.
The album closes with Sublima whose opening line of "don't leave the town broken" is advice I wished all politicians and war mongers would hear and take to heart, this slow reverie of memories of wanting to buy you everything, just for a few more days of joy. We should all be ready for more kisses on your sweet head, all the days and months you spend together cloaked in the atmospheric piano and slowly drummed backing softly ends this very cool album.
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