Search - Alice :: Il Sole Nella Pioggia

Her masterpiece so far

atv2k | 01/16/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Alice always had a multi-cultural background that leads her to explore international dimensions, both in lyrics (she sings in Italian, French, English, Hebrew, Latin...) and in sound. This is probably the less Italian-sounding album she ever produced, but it is also her masterpiece.Every songs evocates a different world: arrangements are smooth, allusive, definitively light, conferring to the tracks a clouds-like consistence. They are fresh air. They breath. The whole recording seems to have its own life, expressed by one of the best voice in pop music ever.Anglosaxon production but songs strongly rooted into the Italian poetical tradition though: Alice seems to be on quest for dreams and imagery which could be evocative and almost popular. This becomes obvious in songs like "Anin a Gris", written by Yuri Camisasca, and sung in a Northern Italian dialect, or in "Orléans", a traditional French song re-arranged, or also in "Le ragazze di Osaka", a cover of a song written by mainstream songwriter Eugenio Finardi. The title track "Il sole nella pioggia" (Sunlight through the rain) is supported by a rhythmical session which reminds of tribal ceremonies in Africa. Drums are the real texture of this recording, scanning the time of the music, whereas keyboards create atmosphere where earth and sky meet, where sunlight passes though rain drops."Il sole nella pioggia" continues the unique sound that Alice started in previous "Park Hotel" and that will keep on maturing and improving in "Charade" and in "Exit" (even though the latter has show some more pop influences coming from a certain British scene such as Portishead, Morcheeba, Massive Attack and Everything but the girl).Just to give you a hint, I think that in Alice's discography, this disc corresponds to what "Hounds of Love" (1985) could be in Kate Bush's one. That is: the achievement of a certain "male" sound and the beginning of a more fragile but selfconfident "feminine" sound."