The best part of this job (if you could call it that, though you really can\u2019t, since \u201cjob\u201d sort of implies both compensation and irritation, neither of which is involved here) is the completely unexpected stuff that just shows up one day in the mail.<\/p>\n
Diego Sandrin is not a name you\u2019re likely to be familiar with unless by some chance you\u2019re an aficionado of either Italian punk band Ice and the Iced (sorry, no) or \u201cGone,\u201d the track he co-wrote with Lisa Marie Presley for her To Whom It May Concern<\/i> album (which is clearly too specific for us to be just making shit up here).<\/p>\n
You might also have seen Sandrin\u2019s name on Italian jazz albums \u2013 he had his own label, Sentemo — or perhaps you caught him in an LA nightclub fronting a band featuring an all-female string quartet.\u00a0 And if you\u2019re thinking by now that this all sounds like the screenplay to a particularly surrealistic European film, heh, as it happens A Fine Day Between Addictions<\/i> was produced by Italian film director Romeo Toffanetti, who had never been inside a recording studio before beginning work on this album at Acustic Studio, near Venice (the one in Italy, not LA).<\/p>\n
Deep breath now.\u00a0 Stay with me.<\/p>\n
A Fine Day Between Addictions<\/i> is a fascinating piece of work.\u00a0 Composed and sung mostly in English with the occasional Italian verses and transliterations, it\u2019s a distinctly cinematic cycle of avant-garde folk songs about the agonies of love, the meaning of life, and the emptiness of modern Western culture.<\/p>\n
Heavy?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 This is not an album you\u2019ll want to dance to, but Sandrin has a wonderful, rather Mark Knoplfer-ish rumble to his vocals from which tumble images and lines both compelling and obscure.\u00a0 The arrangements \u2013 mostly simple and spacious, featuring acoustic guitar and piano, gentle percussion, frequent use of strings and occasional female background vocals \u2013 keep the focus on Sandrin\u2019s voice and storytelling, as well they should.<\/p>\n
The inside front cover of the stylish, detailed lyric-book (each song gets its own page and facing illustration) is emblazoned with the motto \u201cLOVE DEVOURS,\u201d and it doesn\u2019t take long to understand what Sandrin is getting at.\u00a0 \u201cBlanket\u201d is a carefully modulated portrait of a consuming, obsessive crush, a sort of acoustic hymn that finds Sandrin singing \u201cI want your tongue your ears your mouth \/ I want your reflection your every attention\u2026\u201d\u00a0 The chorus is where he reveals the core of the story, though: \u201cI have a blanket to crawl with you under \/ And I\u2019ll have a storm there to shelter you from dear \/ Should I ever see you again.\u201d<\/p>\n
From there you get a series of equally evocative, if not always as intense, portraits of characters and scenarios.\u00a0 \u201cFrom Music To Nothing\u201d portrays the disillusioning aftermath of a love not unlike the one in \u201cBlanket\u201d; \u201cBad Graces\u201d is a sort of calm rant to the same sort of reluctant lover.\u00a0 The middle section of the disc seems like a travelogue of a trip taken in an effort to forget the pain experienced in the first three cuts, as Sandrin visits \u201cSammy\u2019s Farm\u201d and picks apart the foibles of \u201cMy American Friends.\u201d<\/p>\n
This escape doesn\u2019t lead him out of the darkness, though, as in the final third Sandrin goes back to taunting his \u201cPretty Angel,\u201d ranges way off-topic to narrate one song as a teenaged abuse victim who fights back (\u201cAged 14 Years\u201d), and closes with the rocking \u201cI\u2019m Not Happy At All.\u201d<\/p>\n
For all this darkness, these tunes still carry the undercurrent of hope implied by the title, and by curiously ambiguous lines such as \u201cIt takes a faulty mind like mine to be free.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fact that Toffanetti produced and arranged this album with no prior studio experience is frankly astonishing; every arrangement feels pitch-perfect, matching tones and instrumental choices to the lyrics beautifully, and sonically this baby is clean as a whistle.\u00a0 On an iPod, it sounds like Sandrin and company are sitting in the room with you.<\/p>\n
There are times when the whole thing gets a bit overwrought \u2013 I did find the middle section of \u201cMy American Friends\u201d over the top with its swelling strings and horns and calculated-to-shock x-rated lyric; likewise the closing Italian-in-an-echo-chamber narration on \u201cPretty Angel\u201d \u2013 but overall, A Fine Day Between Addictions<\/i> is a dynamic statement by an artist who melds seriousness of purpose with real insight and entertainment value.\u00a0 Avril Lavigne it ain\u2019t, but this is intriguing, challenging, compelling stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":28932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8010],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-40436","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-diego-sandrin","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40436"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}