Blabber’n’Smoke reviewed an excellent live album from the Italian band, Cheap Wine, back in 2016, and, impressed by it, we delved onto their catalogue discovering several albums steeped in a serious American music jag. Steve Wynn and The Dream Syndicate loomed large in their sound along with E Street urban menace and even some of The Doors’ doomed romance. Now along comes Dreams, their latest studio missive, and it’s clear that they’re continuing to pursue their particular take on the American Dream. However they are no mere copyists, their take on what is by now, a traditional sound (some of their influences go back 40 years- if this were the seventies they’d be sourcing 1930s music) is elevated by the grace and fluency of their playing and, importantly the quality of band leader, Marco Diamantini’s, writing along with his vocals.
Dreams is actually the third of a trilogy of sorts. Previous albums, Based On Lies and Beggar Town reflected the turmoil of the economic crisis with the former quite relevant in these days of “fake news.” Dreams is, at times, an Arcadian vision of the future with Diamantini’s songs obliquely optimistic, dreams being, he says, “The magic wand that free us from the limit of the physical body.” As such he sings of reveries such as walking naked down a road on Naked while Cradling My Mind is a somnambulistic affair as Diamantini describes an idyllic car journey as the band gently press the accelerator.
Much of the album is in a similar vein to Cradling My Mind. The Wise Man’s Finger opens with Doors’ like electric piano and wah wah guitar effects before it unwinds over five hypnotic minutes. I Wish I Were The Rainbow’s arpeggio of rippling guitars and swoonful organ create a mood over which Diamamtini calmly declaims his opaque words. Reflection is a shimmering slice of bucolic acoustic guitars and gentle cello which harks back to English folk psychedelia while the title song, buoyed on another gentle tide of acoustic guitars and sympathetic keyboards has Diamantini speaking in a winning whisper of hope eternal, “Never be afraid of falling down or being wrong ’cause your mistakes will be your guide.” It’s a song which could easily fall into a schmaltzy sentimentalism a la Desiderata but instead it’s delivered with sincerity while the lengthy outro, graced with a fine guitar solo, has a grandiose sweep without sounding pompous. It’s tempting to say that this song would have sounded wonderful coming from the voice of Leonard Cohen. I do believe he would have liked a verse like this, “And remember, the greatest works of art were made for you. Dive into this great adventure and grow, baby, grow. And, most of all, always follow your dreams.”
There are a couple of spikier moments. The opening Full Of Glow is a barbed Paisley Underground rocker and Naked stumbles into view with a Crazy Horse like chunk of rhythm. The band even return to the band that gave them their name on the Farfisa organ fuelled grunge of For The Brave which does sound as if it was buried in an early Green On Red release. Quite wonderful.
