The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
Rock is alive... in Berkshire
POP CD they are on a mission to “reinvigorate rock and roll”, a sentiment not all that far removed from Kasabian’s recently declared intent to “save guitar music from the abyss”.
There is certainly a widespread feeling in the music business that the kind of swaggering guitar rock that lorded it over pop culture for decades is fading into commercial and artistic insignificance in a new age of digitally manipulated cross-genre electronic pop. But while the Amazons’ debut represents nothing remotely new, it serves as a timely reminder that there are still things rock does better than any other musical genre.
This album is a belter, a shout-it-to-the-rooftops, alarming, but he also says he composed the whole thing in a week. Emotional excess didn’t interfere with his lucid composing brain.
Pianists who take on Schumann’s music have to catch both sides, the wildness and the lucidity. Schumann was an admirer of J S Bach, and hidden deep in the swirl of his romantic piano sound is the ghost of solid Bach-like counterpoint. Should this ghost be teased out by the pianist, or stay hidden?
Another challenge for pianists is the way Schumann’s music flits back and forth between two imaginary personalities. One is Florestan, who’s impetuous and stormy, the other Eusebius, a gentle dreamer. In the punch-the-sky, yell-alongat-the-top-of-your-voice storm. It is crammed top to bottom with monster riffs, anthemic choruses and the sheer exuberant thrill of being young, in love, and armed with a fuzzbox. On the ridiculously titled Junk Food Forever, frontman and guitarist Matt Thompson sings: “Late nights together/ Jackets in leather/ I can’t forget ya!”
Thompson has an angsty, raw voice that can rise to a sweet falsetto in more tender moments, while the rest of his band swathe his declarations of love and loneliness in harmonious backing vocals. Their subject matter is essentially just girls: can’t live with them, can’t live without them, apparently. Davidsbündlertänze, each short piece was actually signed “F” or “E” (the title means, roughly, “Dances of the brotherhood of David”, an imaginary society dedicated to fighting the conservatives).
It takes a pianist of big personality and perfect technical control to tackle these pieces. There are plenty of great recordings in the catalogue, such as Arthur Rubinstein’s on RCA and Sviatoslav Richter’s on Melodiya. Is young Italian pianist Luca Buratto, laureate of the 2015 Honens Prize, ready to join them? He’s certainly got the “chops” as they say – the treacherous octaves in the Intermezzo of the Humoreske are amazingly fleet and quick. He also has
What the Amazons do particularly well is play together, locking tightly syncopated instrumental sections to catchy, impassioned songs. They like to get stuck into a headbanging groove, grungy riffs counterpointed with thrilling, effects-laden lead guitar, all fused together by a powerhouse drummer with a purpose and cohesion that seems almost unstoppable. There are no keyboards (apart from piano on striking closing ballad Palace), no hip hop inflections or modern pop touches. The whole thing might as well have been smashed together from Black Sabbath, Nirvana, Oasis and Queens of the Stone Age, with a pungently youthful flavour of sexual yearning.
The Amazons share ground with Catfish and the Bottlemen, another young guitar band who have succeeded in filling arenas with singalong love songs. Perhaps romance is what it takes to make rock that sounds like pop music again. One thing is for sure: played with this kind of gusto, it is hard to imagine guitars ever going out of fashion. a searching intelligence (particle physics is one of his enthusiasms), and he relishes the numerous switchbacks in mood. He has an exquisite touch, which is just right for the many pieces marked “Einfach” (simple).
Sometimes Buratto’s playing is over-refined. Schumann frequently uses the direction “Mit guten Humor”, indicating a swaggering, rough quality, which Buratto doesn’t really get. The exquisite Blumenstück (which means “still-life of flowers”) is actually a bit too exquisite, as Buratto smooths over the numerous tempo changes which give the piece its character. But overall this is an impressive recording debut.