Banjo or Freakout - Banjo or Freakout reviews
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| Pitchfork |
 Banjo or Freakout's harmony-kissed bedroom music languishes in negative space. The songs that Banjo principal Alessio Natalizia lets peek out above the grey float along somewhere between the haunted bygone pop of Bradford Cox's Atlas Sound and the ponderous swirl of Panda Bear, their tempos and hooks decidedly impressionistic. In his review of Banjo or Freakout's Way Slow odds and sods compilation last year, Pitchfork's Zach Kelly pegged Natalizia's songs as "ghosted": You can make out their vague outlines and maybe a sense of their spirit, but what's missing often seems more striking than what's actually there. The music's wave machine textures and gently lulling half-songs wash over you, and your thoughts will inevitably wander. Sometimes it's bliss; others, boredom.
Natalizia recorded Banjo or Freakout with Nic Vernhes at the Rare Book Room in Brooklyn, and Vernhes' naturalistic production style deepens the expanses in Natalizia's sound while maintaining its clean lines and immersive chill. What seems at first like a steely, almost surgical minimalism reveals rippling textural undercurrents throughout, lots for the ear to work out. But once you've wandered out into Natalizia's haze a few times and grown accustomed to the fog, you start to realize there's not always much behind it.
Natalizia sings in a sustain-laden, slightly otherworldly pitch not unlike Brad Cox or Noah Lennox, but he's got little of the former's slippery delivery and only a touch of the latter's bell-like clarity, with a nasty habit of swallowing syllables all his own. His self-harmonizing can be lovely and semi-narcotic, but Natalizia's voice doesn't have quite enough character to drive his ineffectual songs. "Go Ahead" and "Move Out" fare well enough and the throaty "Can't Be Mad For Nothing" feels like "My Girls" in greyscale. But save a few darker flutters that cop a move or two from Amnesiac-era Radiohead and the gorgeous up-from-underneath gurgle of closer "I Don't Want to Start All Over Again", the rest of the songs feel meek, unwilling to assert themselves over the music's delicate swirl. Beyond a tricky turnaround here and a nice little vocal double-up there, these tracks feel frail, mostly just sort of whisking by, as though they'd float away were they not weighed down by the translucent synth film....full text |
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| Guardian |
| Italian producer Alessio Natalizia has created an aural equivalent of supernatural horror films such as Paranormal Activity and the Blair Witch Project. For the first half, not much happens: his dreampop-meets-indiepop chugs along pleasantly enough, with the lovely Move Out recalling the early Teenage Fanclub. But somewhere during the eerie Fully Enjoy, the album starts to develop a different atmosphere of creeping menace. As in those films, you can never quite put your finger on why this is – is it those shimmering cymbals, or that haunting, one-note piano? – but he is a master of suspense. Musically, there are obvious reference points in the likes of 1990s shoegaze, Brian Eno ambience and Can-like grooves, but his atmospheres are darker and unfathomable. Mostly, his words are buried in the sonic fog, but the motorik Dear Me finds him seemingly chanting, "I can't live, and I won't die". What it all means is anybody's guess, but it's unsettling, weirdly compelling stuff....full text |
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