Jennifer Gentle - Valende

Genre rock Publisher Sub Pop External Links Official Site Sub Pop

Valende lurches around songform in the manner of Syd Barrett or Red Krayola or early Beefheart. It all sounds a bit woozy; there are kazoos and odd percussion instruments, and these two Italian guys sing like they've ingested helium. This is a dreamscape of how pop music might have developed if no one had ever discovered the joys of a funky rhythm section.

Interesting how musicians from other countries interpret the great Anglo-American era of pop experimentation. The tropicalists of Brazil, in the late '60s, married tales of repression to bright, Beatle-esque melodies, and in my opinion went the Beatles one better in their combination of surface pleasure and sub-rosa terror. Jennifer Gentle's lyrics don't give up anything quite so compelling; this is just pure manipulation of form, a puppet show becalmed psychedelic-Sargasso Sea-style on a ship whose hold contains a gross of headless dolls and some old wrap-around sunglasses.

So while this is not a patch on the best of Barrett, Os Mutantes, Roky Erickson or Skip Spence, fans of those artists might well appreciate this. Some of the organ squiggles remind me of early Soft Machine, before they went jazz-rock. Song titles almost tell the whole story here: "I Do Dream You," "Hessesopoa," "Liquid Coffee," "Nothing Makes Sense." "Hessesopoa" is the obligatory freakout. "Universal Daughter" moves crabwise sort of like the Kinks circa "Berkeley Mews" or Barrett anytime, but think "Bike" or "Dolly Rocker" without any of Barrett's allusion to blues tonality.

In fact, what I find interesting about this is how hard Jennifer Gentle tries to mimic its sources, and how completely they miss what made early Floyd or Safe as Milk or Roky or Spence fascinating--these boys ain't got no blues in them. Whereas most of the early psychedelic bands started out aping Howlin' Wolf or B. B. King; Pink Floyd is named after two obscure old bluesmen. These guys sound, yep, kind of Gentle, never demented. And dementia is missed--yes, dementia is always missed. So, points for trying; this is pleasant enough. Their hearts are in the right place, just as are the well-placed cymbal washes and the glockenspiel and the clunky guitar figures. Sometimes carne in scatola is really just Spam.