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Vincent Gallo | When

Vincent Gallo: Renaissance man?
CD, Warp/Zomba

Tekst: Scott Finnell

Publicatiedatum: 10 december 2001

It would not be hyperbolic to say that Vincent Gallo is one of most talented people in the world. Whatever medium he chooses, Gallo seems to excel: Painting? Gallo was one of the most celebrated American painters of the 80's. Acting? Gallo won acclaim for roles in Palookaville, Arizona Dream, and The Funeral. Directing? Vincent's semi-autobiographical masterpiece Buffalo '66 was the best film of 1998. It's almost impossible to talk about Vincent Gallo's music without talking about him. Gallo, whose new album When joins an impressive roster from Warp Records, is a throwback to a time when fame was cultivated by avant garde artists as well as more mundane stars. Think Jackson Pollock or Andy Warhol: artists whose personality made their radical reconceptualizations of a particular medium palatable to a larger audience than they would otherwise command. Today, with so many disposable pop superstars being churned out in corporate fame factories, younger artists have grown wary of offering up anything of themselves on which the cult of personality could feed. Vincent Gallo is not one of those younger artists. You could spend more than a few entertaining hours reading up on Mr. Gallo in his own words: who he likes (Richard Nixon, Leonardo da Vinci), who he clowns (DJ Spooky), and who he hates (Kiefer Sutherland, John Kennedy Jr.). In fact, I would recommend it. But as this is ostensibly a music review, I'm going to try and focus solely on his music.
Gallo's new album, When, is an achingly honest exploration of the girl that got away. Recorded in Gallo's home studio 'The University for the Development and Theory of Magnetic Tape Recorded Music Studios', Gallo crafts a throwback sound out of his collection of hi-fi equipment from the 30's and 40's. A mix of instrumental songs and heart-wrenching ballads, When sounds as though it was created specifically for the tinny speakers of your grandparent's vacuum tube radio. Gallo, whose father was a disavowed Italian crooner in the Sinatra mold, has a high, vulnerable voice that conjures up the great 40's-era singers. Yet the deep wounds apparent in Vincent's confessional mark this as an undeniably modern album. Take the song "Honey Bunny," a high point of the album, where Gallo sings, "Honey Bunny, my baby girlfriend/Sweet heart, my sugar girlfriend/Where are you? You are my everyday girl/everyday, everyday I think of your smile." On "Laura," Gallo carries the exhibition of heartbreak even further, singing "Laura Laura Laura come back" over and over again, until finishing the song with "Let's find a happy place, we can find-" Gallo, who characteristically composed, performed, and produced the album, chose an extremely simple arrangement for the songs. With a glassy lead guitar or two, a jazzy bass, and the occasional understated drum beat all complementing each other and Gallo's voice, the effect can be hypnotic. Perhaps the most accomplished mix is on the lead track "I Wrote This Song For The Girl Paris Hilton," an instrumental dedicated to the sexy party girl, socialite, and heiress to the Hilton Hotels fortune. Gallo works like a Dadaist poet on this track, cutting and pasting the same seven or eight tape loops into a base sonic pattern that he then tops off with a minimal lead guitar track. While a lot of critics have said this song speaks about a secret emptiness at the heart of Miss Hilton's character or some such romantic goop, I for one thank this is the swankiest song on the album and it exists as Mr. Gallo's earnest attempt at getting laid.
When is another artistic success for Gallo, whose career stretches back all the way to the infernal Punk and New Wave underground of New York in the late 70's. It's a departure for the Warp label, home to such cutting edge electronic acts as Autechre, Squarepusher, and Boards of Canada. But when an auteur whose musical pedigree includes playing in the band Gray with the legendary artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, comes calling with an album that sounds like nothing else on the market, you don't really question how well the music fits the label's image. Listen to it twice, and you'll be wrapped up in warm blankets of hiss and fuzz, gazing into your past at the one that got away.

http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/vincent-gallo/when/1070/
Meer Vincent Gallo op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/vincent-gallo