Bandini
The Sunny Album
Junk Records 2007
Ten Commandments of a debut
1. Who has the mask of Bandini? A quartet of rock guitar Madrid able to cover the dirty realism and the stark intimacy. Bandini make the perfect soundtrack for those who are fully engulfed by loneliness inside their ghosts.
2. The cover of "Sunny The Album" (Junk Records, 2007) is designed by Pepe Hernández (Grupo Salvaje). I do not know if it is pretty or ugly. It was disturbing. This blonde girl looks inward. Introspection. Something that defines Bandini. The book ends with a photo of the smiling girl in question. As the disc. Or almost.
3. Double album. Triple somersault for artistic debut. It takes great courage to appear before the world with such torrential speech. One thinks of double discs and large come to mind "The White Album" by the Beatles, "Exile on Main Street" by the Rolling Stones, the "Blonde on Blonde" by Bob Dylan, "Quadrophenia" the Who, " The River "by Bruce Springsteen," London Calling "the Clash," Being There "by Wilco, the first two discs Tindersticks, the second of Red House Painters ... That's nothing. The case is that it is unlikely to maintain a qualitative level smoothly in a double CD. Bandini emerge successful. Do not have a genius of the caliber of the White Album of the "Fab Four", but in his debut there are no cracks. That is because this band madrileña has had ample time to care for each detail, to each according to the chisel of a sculptor mimo forward beyond the first attempt.
4. What defines a musical Bandini? Emotion. Songs written by Ricardo Ruiz are written with heart and guts (as noted in writing Bukowski John Fante, creator of the literary myth that Arturo Bandini). Within this high-voltage rock emotionally fit all kinds of genres and nuances. This group likes to dig in madrileño folk rock with a clear American descent. But it also found room for exploring dark terrain (rock idling, melancholic pop camera) or black (blues, soul and gospel).
5. Each CD contains two songs-river. These four compositions that go beyond the 7 minutes are the backbone of "The Sunny Album." In the first disc are "Shooting Stars" and "Depression." That is, assuming that no one wants to ask these shooting stars and falling into depression when your whole world falls apart. This tension is neutralized in the second cd. "Autumn Song" and "Wait Until Spring" proclaim that there is still the stronghold of hope. The icy cold of Norway (Ricardo Ruiz, where he lived for a time) is not eternal. Life can lead you astray or misfortune of frustration, but there will always be a loophole through which the light leakage. You just have to wait for the warm breath of spring. That exception to the rule is that happiness comes and sparks justify their banality, defeat unequivocally, the painful isolation. It should also be noted that three of the four songs are decorated with string arrangements and all of them grow to reach the final composition of a cathartic climax.
6. The theme of the album ranges from frustration ( "Did You Ever Have A Dream Like Mine?"), Through indifference ( "Together"), sex without love ( "How Is Your Mind") the chagrin of the "outsider" ( "Something Goes Wrong"), the ambivalence that hates himself, but which also proudly proclaims that it is happy to be like ( "Happy To Be Me"), longing to tarnish those windows that we call eyes ( "Missing," "The Sheet That Dreams Are Made Of"), the anguish of the "loser" ( "All The Pain"), dressed in the hope remorse ( "One Day") and doubt that lives in darkness and light illuminates the hopes that dark night of the soul ( "Shine"). The path is clear. One hardly survive. Find love. Takes refuge in sex. Dying in solitude. Looks around him and society oppresses him. It alienated. Write to empty, to flee, to find a direction. Bandini And just finding redemption in the healing power of music.
7. John Fante is the most obvious literary reference, but there are others along winks "The Sunny Album." If a escarba finds dating to Paul Auster, Emily Bronte, Kant and Nietzsche. Also an explicit homage to the seminal Western "The Searchers" (John Ford) in "Missing."
8. The expressiveness of the voice of Ricardo Ruiz is vital. But the arrangements are basically a group of guitars. The keyboard not only serves as a cushion, but some passages leading towards the vision of beautiful landscapes. And the rhythmic foundation contends with all the majesty scaffolding. There is only hope that in subsequent deliveries Bandini broaden horizons in terms of structuring the songs.
9. Beyond brainy analysis, what remains is the truth of a handful of songs born to endure. Bandini require an effort of the listener. Her songs do not come to the first. While it is true that they have something like a "hit" (the pop song is "Happy To Be Me," his song with more commercial potential). They have the backing of some other item leathery ( "All The Pain") and, above all, know when to operate on its target lyrical vein (as an example "The Sheet That Dreams Are Made Of," "Autumn Song, "" One Day "or" Together ").
10. And now the thorny issue of influences. Above all seems difficult to place somewhere on the national scene. Are other references. Quench their thirst in the trough in which cools other alchemists of the size of Nick Drake, John Lennon, Elliott Smith, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Lou Reed, Mark Eitzel, Mark Kozelek, Stuart Staples, Nick Cave and Jeff Tweedy. But be sure, Bandini is not a revisionist. Inspired as in times of crisis and have the courage to make a "striptease" emotional disarming. Have the courage to defeat that he has lost everything, but still fighting.
