Monolith Cocktail Blog

REVIEW FROM OUR FRIENDS AT Kalporz
AUTHORED BY Matteo Maioli – TRANSLATED BY Dominic Valvona
PHOTO CREDIT: Luca Mazzieri

Continuing our successful collaboration with the leading Italian music publication Kalporz , the Monolith Cocktail shares and translates reviews, interviews and other bits from our respective sites each month. Keep an eye out for future ‘synergy’ between our two great houses as we exchange posts during 2024 and beyond. This month regular Kalporz scribe Matteo Maioli reviews the latest album by James Jonathan Clancy on his own Maple Death label.

After the experiences with His Clancyness, A Classic Education, Settlefish and Brutal Birthday and seven years after his last album , the Italian-Canadian James Jonathan Clancy returns with the first album under his own name, released earlier in February by label he founded Maple Death Records.

Sprecato (which translates from Italian into “wasted”), written and recorded between Bologna and London at intervals between 2018 and 2023, presents the first of a visual and graphic collaboration with Michelangelo Setola – borne in an exchange of suggestions between the two artists through music and drawing, in the sharing of an almost apocalyptic idea of ​​”urban pastoral” with marginality, exploitation and alienation of the individual at its centre.

Across eleven tracks our many musical souls converge, from the role of the cosmic loner folk in “I Want You” to those of the avant-garde on “To Be Me”. But also bucolic minimalism in the opener “Castle Night”, no-wave bathed in electronics for “A Worship Deal” – which fuses together Cabaret Voltaire and Pop Group -, and psychedelia on the splendid “Had It All” – between Tim Hardin and Flying Saucer Attack. Dreamlike dilations combined with Walkerian lyricism thus traces a line of demarcation crossed by a Clancy in constant emotional transport. The setlist effectively alternates imaginative songs that occupy space and then immobilise it, see “Precipice”, with soundtracks from a primordial world (“Fortunate”, the Radioheadian Amnesiac heights of “Immense Immense Wild”).

To complete Sprecato Clancy brought together a cast of friends and international guests including Stefano Pilia, co-producer of the album and true right-hand man of the operation (like a Warren Ellis for Nick Cave perhaps?), Andrea Belfi on drums, Enrico Gabrielli of Calibro 35 and Afterhours fame on flutes and Francesca Bono on both piano and vocals, whilst the core of the band is formed by the Maple Death house musicians Dominique Vaccaro (guitars, aka JH Guraj), Andrea De Franco (synths, Fera) and Kyle Knapp (sax, of Cindy Lee). The curiosity is all about the live performance now, because the album easily ranks among the most successful things in James Jonathan Clancy’s decade, and more, spanning career.

SCORE: 81/100