SOUNDTRACK: MARCO BENEVENTO-Between the Needles and Nightfall (2010).
This is the third album by Marco Benevento and his trio: Reed Mathis on bass and Andrew Barr on drums.
It’s hard to put this release into any genre because of how fluid Benevento is. He has some poppy songs, some jazzy bits and some experimentation.
Most of the songs are pretty long (over 6 minutes) and none of the songs have words (well, one has a aspoken section).
“Greenpoint” flows around a very simple bass line as Marco plays a poppy piano throughout the song. There’s also some synthy blasts that move the song beyond a simple piano motif. Around the four minute mark, the song shifts gears, growing a little faster and little more intense as the drums crash through.
“Between the Needles” is a slower song with a pretty bass line and slow piano chords. After a minute and a half it takes off a bit with bigger piano chords and a more dramatic tone. But then it all slows down to just piano before building up again, this time with even more evocative lead bass. “Two of You” is quieter, with a waverly keyboard line that lays under the lead piano The main piano line acts like a lead vocal line and is really pretty and quite catchy as well. It builds into a nice bouncy song by the end.
“Numbers” is a slow song with a lead bouncing bass and simple keyboard intro chords. The song builds in layers until it is a loud, almost-crashing sound with some jazzy piano soloing on top. “It came from You” is a super catchy piano melody with some complicated electronic drumming. It turns into a bouncy and fun romp by the end.
“Ila Frost” is one of the catchiest things on the album–a lively piano melody both in the repeated background and the main lead line. It’s followed by the even catchier “RISD.” In addition to the fun pulsing bass, the main echoing keyboard melody is simple but instantly catchy.
“You Know I’m No Good” is the shortest song on the disc. It’s a slinky torch song that is actually written by Amy Winehouse. Knowing that, you can hear it in the delivery. There’s a sort of crashing drum section in the middle. This song also has the only vocals–worldless “da da daing” toward the end.
“Music Is still secret” is a lovely, slow jazzy ballad. While “Wolf Trap” is the opposite. There’s some loud clangy drums and a big fuzzed up bass that matches perfectly with the really noisy piano melody. Once the song starts going, there is some ferocious soloing from Marco as the rest of the band jams behind him.
The disc ends with “Snow Lake” an electronic kind of processed sounding track that mixes some interesting synths and some low ringing bass. It ends with a wild cacophony of sounds–electric and otherwise–and then abruptly ends.
There’s not a lot of earworms on this disc. But everything sounds great. The musicianship is top notch and the songs are all pretty fun.
[READ: September 14, 2010] “Lucky Girls”
In this story, the narrator is an American woman living in India.
As the story opens she says she always imagined what it would be like meeting Arun’s mother for the first time. She pictured a fancy restaurant with herself looking stunning.
But in reality, Mrs Chawla showed up at the apartment one day, unannounced. The narrator had been living there for five years and had yet to meet the mother of the man who owned the place.
The narrator was in her painting clothes when Mrs Chawla showed up. The narrator considered changing, but decided against it. Mrs Chalwa was shorter than expected; she looked at the narrator as if she too were not what was expected.
The servant, Puja, brought the tea. Mrs Chalwa had provided the servant for her, although Puja was not very good. Since Arun was no longer there to tell Puja what to do, things had gotten noticeably shabby. Puja also did not do a very good job with the tea and Mrs Chawla said (in Hindi ) that she would send Puja and her family back to Orissa. She then told the narrator that the people there were tribal, they had nothing.
The story flashes back to when the narrator met Arun. She was in India visiting Gita, her college roommate. She had wanted to see where Gita was from and they took her sightseeing to all of the tourist places (never to anywhere authentic). There was large party one night and the narrator snuck into a bedroom for some downtime. In that room a man was hiding. He introduced himself as Arun, Gita’s Uncle.
Gita and Arun took the narrator sightseeing–the Taj Mahal was gorgeous at day break. That night, their hotel air conditioner went out. The narrator stepped outside while Gita slept peacefully. She ran into Arun who was smoking. After some brief conversation, they wound up in bed together.
She kept in touch with Arun over the next three year and then, upon his invitation, she moved to India. Gita was pleased to see her, but the rest of Gita’s family did not approve of this behavior.
Arun helped her to find the apartment that she was currently in. His family never invited her over. She hadn’t considered at the time that it was because he was married with children. After the narrator had established herself in the apartment, Arun’s mother wrote wondering is she was curious about Arun’s wife: “she is younger than Aryun, although not as young as you.”
The reason Arun is no longer around is because he died unexpectedly. Her family assumed she would return home. But she had other ideas. She told them she would stay in India because she had made friends there. This was utterly untrue. She spoke to no one and those who saw her did not think much of her.
The end of the story is a reckoning for her–will she remain stubborn in India?
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