I can remember a time, not long ago, when every album in my collection that
had lyrics was in English. I scoffed at the idea of rock music in other
languages. Remember those Russian metal bands of the glasnost era?
Exactly. In recent months, however, my chauvinism has been ruthlessly
chiseled away. First Sigur Rós, and now Diafana Krina have proven to me
that anglophony is not a prerequisite for making great music.
Diafana Krina may be Greek, but don't look for bouzoukis here. The band is composed
of a standard five-piece lineup, with Thanos Anestopoulos, the singer,
doubling on keyboards and guitarist Nick Bardis blowing a mean trumpet. The
instrumentation is, however, the only thing about this album that is
standard.
Silence Gives The Odour of Cherries is the band's third full-length,
and it finds the group at the height of their powers. Their sound is one part
The Cure and two parts Bends-era Radiohead, shaken lightly and poured
out in layers of breathtaking audio bliss. They play guitar lines that Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood would be proud to call his own. Anestopolous' voice is a rich baritone, which can on occasion sound a bit overly emphatic, but which generally meshes well with the rest of the band. The songs start
in a tight knot, then explode into grand, expansive musical cries; they
play off of each other in complex and ever-shifting ways, the product of
more than a decade of recording music together.
Like Sigur Rós, the group tends to favor heroic song lengths; the album's twelve tracks fill more
than seventy-three minutes, and as with
the aforementioned Icelandic sensations, the music justifies its length. Often a theme will sprout out of nowhere in the fifth minute of a song, completely changing the melody,
and then rejoining it to the original line. This is music made by people
who take music seriously without making it overly-intellectual.
Unfortunately, my monolinguality prevents me from commenting on the lyrics.
Based on the group's other aspects, I suspect that they're good. Still,
it's tough adjusting to the fact that the beautifully-printed lyric booklet
will have to remain (ahem) Greek to me.
Editor's Note: Anyone interested in acquiring a copy of this album should contact the label at myvoice@otenet.gr.
