English Version: Sycamore Age - Sycamore Age (Santeria, 2012) - Indie-eye

Imagine being able to mix the lyrical approach of the two Buckley generations with the most experimental prog-rock tunes. In this vein, Sycamore Age have crafted a self-titled full length in which its dreamy core is enriched by quite an impressive range of instruments: theremin, bouzouki, strings and all sorts of wind instruments, pianos and double basses, electronics, warm percussion instruments of every kind of electric guitars. Moreover, this Italian collective of seven multi-instrumentalists played with a myriad of ceramic, wooden sticks, fists on the furniture, forks on a grater, programmable music boxes, lids, spoons and cutting boards to shape such a refined debut. There is some of the darker Polar for the Masses-like prog-rock, in which backing vocals and percussions reiterate a shamanic atmosphere (‘Binding Moon’), almost resembling evocative Celtic dirges. This same dark and almost post-rock approach is given to the interlude ‘Dark and Pretty Part Two’, in which a tendency is clear to create visual music, almost recalling the soundtrack for a movie or a gothic cartoon. Some tracks wink at Tim Burton and Danny Elfmann in their approach (‘Astonished Birds’, ‘Romance’), whilst in some others the heavier prog and noise tunes of Shipping News and Lunatic Soul (‘Kelly!!!’) are blended in with synths and dreamy Cashier No.9 interludes (‘How to Hunt a Giant Butterfly’). More percussion and choirs are at the basis of the ritual ‘Happy!!!’, in which ethnic folk reaches its peak. Folk itself is hinted at in the whole album, not only due to the Jeff Buckley-esque vocals (‘At Biggest Tree’, ‘Dark and Happy’), but also to the focus on ‘Last Goodbye’ sound-a-like ‘Tears and Fire’, in which acoustic guitars and violins create a musical elevation that reaches the melancholic atmospheres of Buckley’s ‘Grace’. A really dense and complex series of tracks, whose strength is the heated atmosphere it creates, not as disturbing as Roll the Dice’s one, but still captivating in its composition. The perfect soundtrack for a Victorian gothic novel or Burton’s new stop-motion cartoon, ‘Sycamore Age’ is the album every prog-rock connoisseur would love.