Leopardo - Malcantone [RED VINYL] – New LP

Limited RED-VINYL edition.

Another essential listen from Feel It Records, a bit of oddball and a lot of awesome as usual from this label, LEOPARDO from Fribourg, Switzerland, chiming through the fuzz and distortion with ESL vocals and loads of jangle, likely influenced by Syd Barrett and VU and reminding me a bit of one of my other favorite bands, Worthwhile Way from Japan, except unlike that band, this is much less optimistic and much more drenched in melancholy, an uneasiness running through the entire set...yet along with unsettling elements, this also has a comforting quality, like butter spread across bread, sitting on the davenport in the basement, like a paper-plate dinner with only the people you really like the most, natural as a makeshift show in a cracked-cement lot with 3 skateboard kids in the background...unlike so many that surfaced in the swells of interest in Velvet Underground over the decades, this also learned from punk, doesn't let some strive for perfection clog up the whole thing with intentions that get in the way of making good music.  Unlike some quirky garage-pop outings, this has a heavy cloud hanging overhead, and while that is usually more other people's things than my own, there are heaps of exceptions, when it's good it's good, and this features some lifting of the blanket of melancholy, the female background vocals come in like rays of sunshine and instruments like whiffs of fresh breezes, and whenever it seems to be getting too heavy, they notch up the tempo and hop on a beep-beep get-out-of-my-way ride in a open-door StepVan and head off through the fog toward a beach where the sun might not be shining but friends are certainly waiting.  It always seems an attempt to lift out of the gloom, and clearly does this on several songs, but the sequencing is interesting, instead of resolution, we are intentionally left with the unsettling elements.  As this is with movies that do the same, that helps let the music linger long after the needle lifts.

 

And the remedy I have found, is to simply listen to it again.  (In fact, I listened to this so much that I overextended my Bandcamp until they said no more, but now that I got the vinyl, I can listen to it all the time.  If you end up liking this on digital, you'll love it to death when you hear the analog sounds.) -- winch (green noise)