L'Altra - Music of a Sinking Occasion
(Aesthetics)
Music of a Sinking Occasion, L'Altra's second release and first full length, is a
soothing and comfortable album to enjoy on a quiet night when relaxing from a hard
day at work. Using organ, piano, acoustic
guitar, electric guitar, bass, drums, cello, and perfectly complimentary male and
female vocals, L'Altra create a wonderful mixture of Ida's folky love ballads and
Chicago-like instrumentation.
My first impression of this album, sadly, was not a positive one. The first few
times I listened to this, I quickly fell asleep, totally due to my own exhaustion,
only hearing the first song. Though that song,
"Music of a Sinking Occasion," is not the worst song ever written, it doesn't
sound anything at all like the rest of the album. The song contains a drum machine
(or real drums made to sound like a drum machine)
playing a fairly steady dance-type beat, with piano, keyboard, and slide guitar
filling in the rest, sounding as if the album was done by two bands: one recorded
an album and one recorded a single to use as that
album's lead off track.
When I decided to write a review about Music of a Sinking Occasion, I started to
really listen to the whole album, and I was amazed at how beautiful the rest of
the album was. I was really surprised by the fact
that one song had colored my opinion of the release in such a inaccurate way.
The rest of the 9 songs on the album range from the lush full band arrangements
(guitar, drums, organ, male and female vocals) on "Movement," "Little Chair," and
"Room Becomes Thick," to the quiet
intimacy of "Slow as Cake" and "Handwashing for Good Health" which feature just
guitar, organ, and female vocals. "Music of a Sinking Occasion.final," the last
song on the album, is a stripped down song
featuring only piano and organ melodies that interweave and play off of each other
to make a perfect ending to a wonderful album.
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