Album Review
Acantus
Acantus
Gimell
[Compay Segundo is squinting at the cover of Acantus' debut album. He stares at the plastic case straight on, then holds it away from his face and tilts it until the photograph is at an angle of almost forty-five degrees from the horizon of his regard. His cigar is threatening to go out, but he does not notice. Joseito Fernandez sits nearby. He is pretending to think about Acantus, but in fact he is wondering what he should have for lunch. There is some leftover corned beef in the fridge. He might have it on a sandwich.]
Compay Segundo: Why are there tits on the cover?
Joseito Fernandez: Those are not tits. That is cleavage.
Compay: Tits, cleavage, why is there a cross between them?
Joseito: Perhaps Acantus thought they were Madonna; I don't know, what are you looking at me for? Do I remind you of a man with unusual insights into breasts?
C: Madonna?
J: Why do w - oh no, not that one, not the religious one, not the Christian one; I mean the one with the children and the cone-bra and the English husband who makes violent movies about criminals who feed men to pigs.
C: The one I am talking about would make more sense. This is supposed to be religious music. "Sacred songs of the people from medieval Italy," says the CD booklet. "This recording attempts to show an unfamiliar aspect of 14th and 15th century Italian sacred music known to the modern musicologist as simple polyphony." The tone of the writing is scholarly, which makes the presence of the cleavage seem doubly odd.
J: Well then, the breasts represent simple polyphony of the Italian people and the scholarly tone represents the more complicated mensural polyphony that developed in France after simple polyphony was already established. Mensural polyphony relegated simple polyphony to the status of a common-peoples' music, as the scholarly tone condemns the breasts to the status of looking doubly odd in the opinion of Compay Segundo. They're symbolic breasts. There.
[Compay Segundo is barely listening. He frowns at the tip of his cigar, which has finally expired.]
C: At any rate, the music makes me think of a Gregorian chant.
J: It has a different feel. A Gregorian chant floats. This has a rooted quality. On some of these songs I would even call Alessandra Fiori's voice brassy, as if she were the medieval Italian Ethel Merman. The voices move strongly forward while in a Gregorian chant they move up. The traditional folk instruments they use have an uneven, imperfect sound which makes the music seem human. Gregorian chants don't seem human, they seem angelic. Then there is this drone in 'O Crux Fructus' which gives the singers a - um, a floor to stand on, if you know what I mean. An earth floor. Then the instruments romp and bounce and it all ends with a thump.
C: I admire the way they throw their voices out in 'Cum autem venissem,' daringly, like fishing nets.
J: The difference between Acantus and a Gregorian chant is the difference between a plain stone church and a cathedral. In both the sound is clear and direct and the enunciation is carried out with economical purity. It seems ingenuous, however, to say that this is the sound of medieval Italy.
C: Ha, true. I imagine that the medieval Italian countryside was not filled with people who sounded as if they had been trained at a conservatory. Acantus sound far too clean and professional to be called medieval ... oh, this is no good Joseito, I am being waylaid by the mystery of this album, and so are you, and so, I believe will be all those who come after us -
J: The -
C: The breasts of course, those damned bosoms, and the secret that hangs over them in the shape of a silver-embroidered and flowering crucifix ...
