blonde redhead

You wouldn't believe it, but Blonde Redhead's new album "23" is even better than the antecessor and must-have "Misery Is A Butterfly". Listen to it is comparable with reading a book of poems by Erich Fried - "I love you less now that I know you". You drift between heaven and hell, between fear and hope when Kazu Makino bewitches you with her incommensurable voice while Amedeo Pace's pressureful chant helps you be well grounded again. Bittersweet and/or fleet-fooded the melodies stream through your body and create fields of goose bumps not only on your skin, but in your brain too. Melancholy everywhere - everywhere melancholy.... The highly creative trio with Amadeo's twin brother Simone persuade again with authentic hymns to life and what it's about. Music to complex for the radio, music for the last romantics on earth, music for advanced ones.

"Looking everywhere, I see nothing but people (...) they are calling me."

As if getting a spread in a popular home décor magazine just a month prior to this album's release wasn't enough of a tipoff, Blonde Redhead have come a long way since their days of mimicking Sonic Youth's brittle art-rock. Clanging guitars have been replaced by warm synthesizers and soft strings, while Japanese singer Kazu Makino's thin voice has become a ghostly moan on the grandiose opener and title track of the New York trio's seventh full-length release, 23. Their last one, 2004's Misery Is a Butterfly, was a lovely throwback to the dream-pop heyday of the Cocteau Twins and Lush. This one presses further down that road, only with a more experimental streak, as cascading guitars, military rhythms, and wobbly melodies shape opulent, otherworldly songs like "The Dress" and "My Impure Hair." --Aidin Vaziri

band: www.blonde-redhead.com, myspace
label: www.4ad.com