In The Afternoon

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From the opening strains of 'Soft Connection', the first track on L'Altra's stunning second album, the tingles run down your spine, as you feel your body melt to the gentle interplay between piano and guitar, male and female vocal, the soft rise of the horns, and the slightly muted yet ever present pounding of drums. To hear the combination of Lindsay Anderson and Joseph Costa's voices, underpinned with the soaring, elegant and tragically melancholic wash of instrumentation, is to be frozen in time for a moment stretching to eternity.
'Black Arrow' delivers as sharp and poignant a song as has ever been crafted, a bitter sweet masterpiece of shattered love, delivered in the most tender and delicate manner. The imagery commanded by 'Traffic' is so eloquent, the forlorn and fragmented lyrics only hinting at clues, like overhearing snippets of someone else's conversation, your mind straining to fill in the blanks.

I'm at a loss to fully decribe the impact of this record, how fully immersed you can become in the poetic lilt of the lyrics, ambigious enough for you to be able to wrap your own stories within their words, to take a break from your own life and have their sound become your world, even if just for the length of the record.

Like a world weary traveller, this record personifys a tired yet learned knowledge, a world where your eyes are open to the pain and hurting, down but not out, still able to see and craft beauty from the seemingly random events of life, and to hold your head up with an optimism; to sit in a cafe supping a coffee, watching the rain form concentric circles in the puddles of water, the shoppers and walkers huddled under brollies, rushing to and fro about the business of their life.

A truly beautiful record, well worthy of a place in the top ten of 2002. If you enjoyed L'Altra's first album, then you know you will love this one. For fans of Sigur Ros, Low, or for anyone who appreciates well crafted sad songs.