Edible Woman - Everywhere at Once

  by Malcolm Carter

published: 4 / 9 / 2010

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Review

This is the third album from Italian band Edible Woman and is far from the musical mess I’d expected it to be. Their press release gives the impression that the band are musically all over the place quoting acid punk rock, furious synth attacks and post hardcore textures. To someone who likes a good tune and words that I can at least hear it all sounded too much. Good job that we actually listen to these albums rather that just re-write their press releases like some do then. To give whoever wrote the press release some credit I have to admit that the mention of the singer in Edible Woman, either Luca or Andrea Giommi depending if you believe the CD inlay or the press release, does indeed sound uncannily like Neil Young in places. Strange that an Italian band can sound like Neil Young but true. While the band do fuse an amazing variety of influences and sounds together it never verges on just being a mess of sound that is heavy going. I was expecting their melodies to be buried under a mass noise and not even a Jesus And Mary Chain type of good noise. But the melodies are floating on top of the sounds these musicians make and even the singing especially on songs like ‘Entomology’ is superb. In fact that song is one of the most catchy and immediately accessible tracks on ‘Everywhere At Once. It’s all too short at just over two minutes long, but it shows the band have a proper grasp of melody and can sing sweetly when the song demands it. Following on from ‘Entomology’ is ‘To My Brother’ and this is where the band shows its noisy-hardcore roots. Although keyboardist Federico Antonioni holds the song together and drummer Nicola Romani must have taken a week off to get the feeling back in his arms after such a frantic but impressive input the song never falls apart or loses its way. It’s cut from a very different cloth to the songs that precede it but it’s still so very much more than just the sonic mess I thought I was going to listen to. ‘The Shadows of Doubt’ had me thinking of the Stranglers and had a decidedly sixties feel to it. It also sounded very English, which was the most surprising thing about it coming as it does from an Italian band. An Italian band who sound like Neil Young and The Stranglers at times are surely worth a listen! The last song, ‘Hi, This Is Hardcore’, starts with a repetitive industrial bass/percussion line that is again surprisingly catchy especially with the sound affects weaving in and out before the band let lose again with a wall of sound and lyrics where the vocalist is certainly not comparable to Neil Young. But I guess sometimes you just have to shout. So Edible Woman has given us thirty minutes of music that really can’t be compared to much else around at the moment. For all the influences that creep in here and there the band has actually produced something really unique and listenable. There’s enough going on in those thirty minutes to allow most people to find something to like. I’m almost tempted to say that this is the biggest surprise of an album that I’ve heard all year.

Track Listing:-

1 Slightly Shifted
2 A Small Space Odissey
3 Everywhere At Once
4 Goran Sarajlic
5 Entomology
6 To My Brother
8 The Shadows of Doubt
9 Hi, This Is Hardcore