Forty years after their artistic birth, Jim and William Reid continue to enjoy excellent musical health, despite the hackneyed cliché. This celebration – which they complete with the publication of a book, a documentary and an imminent tour – is dressed sonorously with a work that continues to show them to be reluctant to convention, and where they make room for the most recognizable and effective weapons in their vocabulary, as well as as a series of new ideas. And they materialize all this in a welcome combination of maturity and a certain sonic sophistication. All this means that in some moments of ‘Glasgow eyes’ the echoes of Suicide or Kraftwerk are recognizable.
The Scottish Reid brothers offer a sampler where the reinterpretation of these influences acquires its own personality, as is the case of a couple of outstanding pieces such as ‘Mediterranean In another direction, and just as correct, we would have to place ‘The Eagles and The Beatles’, a piece with an emblematic vocation that exudes high-caliber glam punk and that brings to mind the Iggy Pop of the seventies. Although, for a clear sign of fidelity to the band’s sound, nothing better than ‘Chemical animal’, which emanates that muscular and dark energy. This commendable attitude of renewal and at the same time fidelity is especially relevant in the case of a turbulent band, with separation and reunification in 2007. In fact, this is the second album since then… and may it last.
Holter, who has composed and produced all the music on ‘Something in the room she moves’, publishes his most heterogeneous work, within his usual sophisticated line. A succession of pieces that avoid the orthodox canon of the song and that form a suggestive sound canvas between the atmospheric and cinematic, with small peaks, like ‘Meyou’.
In his third full-length work, the vitamin-dense Dutch vocalist offers an introspective itinerary throughout some compositions that he conveys with his well-known and addictive soul cocktail, R
Round and authentic work like all of Aresté’s, as well as attractive from the initial ‘The boat’. Winds, guitar or unduplicated voice are some of the weapons he uses to build a singer-songwriter work, which also places emphasis on clear instrumentation. ‘Canta, cadernera’ with Pol Batlle and Rita Payés or the sanguine ‘La riuada’ testify to its authenticity.
