Simone Massaron – baritone electric guitar, electric guitar, pump organ, tenor banjo, electric lap steel, acoustic guitar, loops, slide guitar, guitar noise | Carla Bozulich – voice | Xabier Iriondo – mahai metak, old 20’s gramophone | Andrea Viti – electric bass, pedal bass | Zeno De Rossi – drums | Davide Tedesco – double bass | Riccardo Di Paoloa – pump organ, piano | Francesco Guerri – cello
Tracklist: 1. Never Saw Your Face 2. Dandelions On Fire 3. Love Me Mine 4. The Getaway Man 5. Five Dollar Lottery 6. Here In The Blue 7. Baby, You So Creepy 8. My Hometown 9. I Saw Him
Produced
by Fabrizio Perissinotto and Simone Massaron. Recorded at Nicolosi Studios, June the 26th and 28th 2007 by Lorenzo Monti and Maurizio Giannotti. Mastered at Bips Studio by Maurizio Giannotti. Thanks to Bosoni music shop in Milano, Pirrera guitars, Sound Metak, Nels Cline, Steve Piccolo, David Moretti, Stefano Massaron. Special thanks to Carla, Xabier, Andrea, Zeno, Francesco, Davide, Riccardo and Fabrizio for their help and their music. Zeno De Rossi appears courtsey of El Gallo Rojo Records. Artwork by Elena Raffa. Cover photo by Francesca Bosoni. | www.simonemassaron.com
Simone Massaron
boasts an impressive circle of musical acquaintances that includes Nels Cline, Marc Ribot , and Steve Piccolo. Judging by the diversity, adventure, and pure talent put into Dandelions on Fire, you can begin to understand why we’ll start paying just as much attention to Massaron as his respective musical cohorts.
Dandelions… runs the gamut in terms of depth, composition, and hauntingly precise vocal accompaniment. Carla Bozulich’s voice is as clean and as throaty as it’s ever been, sliding over Massaron’s compositions like a thick silk. Despite being born and raised in Italy, and being a revered fretless jazz guitar player, Massaron’s ability to channel the grime and soul right off any southern blues ballad is the most impressive aspect of this album. The tracks “Never Saw Your Face” and “Five Dollar Lottery” are quintessential examples of this ability. “Never Saw Your Face” opens the album and shows you just how deep Massaron can go towards the abysmal side of emotion, while “Five Dollar Lottery” hits you at the midway point, reminding you what he still has in store. Too dark for any blues club, and too straight-forward for any jazz club, these songs are right at home in the grittiest lamp-lit back-alley.
The Massaron machine doesn’t stop at just jazz and blues, though. Several of the songs would fit almost anyone looking for a folk background. He trades in his arsenal of guitars for a banjo and taps into a very legitimate backcountry sound. “Love Me Mine” and “My Hometown” are a couple of upbeat little ditties that keep the album refreshing and light, for when you need a break from the heavier serious side conveyed by the other tracks. By the time you get to the last track on the album, you’ve heard jazz, blues, folk, and ballads that hold their own, and answer to nothing. It isn’t until the closer, “I Saw Him,” that you get to experience Massaron and Co.’s throat-grabbing improvisational skills. It broods through ambience, falters in and out of subconsciously formed rhythms, and raises the hair on your neck through Bozulich’s blatant yells. One might get the impression that she’s narrating the story of an apparition so terrifying that it’d send someone running through the bayous of Mississippi in the middle of the night.
I couldn’t help but feel that the material presented by Massaron’s Dandelions on Fire would be at home on any of the Tom Waits’ albums from the past decade. I couldn’t find any direct correlation from Massaron to Waits through background digging, and that’s what makes this album even better. It bears the almost unmistakable variances of an extremely seasoned veteran, yet makes no apologies when it comes to claiming its individuality. This is one uniquely diverse collection that’s sure to satiate any fan of Mr. Waits or Nels Cline, but would likely also be in frequent rotation of any dedicated Carla Bozulich fan. — songfrontiers
Featuring Carla Bozulich
on vocals, Simone Massaron on guitars, banjo & loops, Xabier Iriondo on mahai metak, Andrea Viti & Davide Tedesco bass and Zeno de Rossi on drums. We know of guitarist, Simon Massaron, from two ther discs on this same label with Danielle Cavallanti and Giovanni Maier. Drum wiz, Zeno de Rossi, can be found on more than a half dozen discs on the El Gallo Rojo and Splasch labels. I must admit that I’ve become a big fan of singer, Carla Bozulich, over the past few years. I’ve caught Carla live with the last version of the Gerald Fibbers, with Nels Cline in Scarnella, her tribute to Willie Nelson and with Evangelista at the Victo Fest a couple of years back. It is difficult to describe what it is that is so special about her, yet each time I hear her sing, she does me in. Once again, Carla is in fine form on this disc with these righteous Italian folk/blues rockers. She sounds so world weary on the opening tune, “Never Saw Your Face,” which features some dark, probing string thing (mahai metak?) and scrunchy, scary guitar from Simone. The title track sounds as if it was written for Roy Orbison or maybe Elvis Presley, touching without being cheesy. Simone plays some earthy, skeletal banjo and slide guitar on “Love Me Mine” with some fine bluesy vocals by Carla. Carla wrote all of words here (in English) and does all of the singing as well. Simone’s music, arranging and playing fit Carla’s voice like a well worn glove throughout. Don’t let this buried treasure slip from your hands, you deserve to soothe yourself in the haunting sounds of ‘Dandelions on Fire’. —Downtown Music Gallery
CD version (incl. shipment cost world-wide)
Adding...
Dandelions Dn Fire is an Italian project driven by composer and guitarist Simone Massaron, whose connection with Bozulich is presumably via LA guitarist Nels Cline. Opener “Never Saw Your Face” is a lowering two-chord drama with bowed bass and harmonium, and we are broadly in Tom Waits territory. Massaron, whose speciality is fretless guitar, also brings banjo and lap steel, and young Italian drummer Zeno de Rossi is moodily appropriate on brushes and junkyard percussion. Bozulich moves in restrained mode between tender and creepy; her lyrics and vocal performances are great, and because this is not her group she’s careful not to break out and start testifying. Tracks like “Five Dollar Lottery” are hypnotic, grinding riffs full of colour and menace, while for the title track it’s back to the sour sweet of Country: “When you shine, this dandelion’s on fire.”
Une chanteuse qui s’appelle Carla B., avec un guitariste italien . . prenomme Simone: sur le papier, ce disque a l’air d’une blague. En l’écoutant, on ne va pas rigoler beaucoup, mais on va s’extasier une fois de plus sur la voix de Carla RI! y a des lustres, on avait découvert cette fille perdue du country-punk au sein des Geraldine Fibbers. L’an dernier, elle nous hantait sur l’album d’Evangelista. Dande/ions on Pire, écrit par le guitariste Simone Massaron pour Carla Bozulich, est l’écrin d’un diamant noir. Entre Patsy Cline et Patti Smith, Carla Bozulich poursuit son exploration passionnante de mondes qui se croisent rarement -la country et la musique expérimentale -, renouant avec l’esprit de la old weird America, l’époque où la musique folk était un terrain vierge et parfois dangereux. Carla Bozulich envoie les violons, mais c’est un disciple de John Cale qui les martyrise, accompagné de musiciens plus à l’aise dans la zone industrielle qu’à la campagne. Country music dans la salle des machines, un jour de tremblement de terre, Dande/ions on Pire est un des ces albums extrêmes et dérangés que PJ Harvey aurait pu rêver d’enregistrer.