ALLORA
Selected Press:
“The New York singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist’s latest LP is one with the flora and fauna of drones, mangled horns and stone-cold rock ‘n’ roll—a project that answers to detail-driven emotion and blankets itself in communal tenderness.” -Paste Magazine, a Paste Pick
“Ben Seretan’s new LP is loud and cathartic, filled with psychedelic noise, gospel-tinged refrains, unhinged guitar mania, and a live-in-the-studio sound.” -PopMatters, a PM Pick
-Stereogum Interview w/ Ian Cohen
-Small Albums Best Album of July
“It hints at kraut-rock and psychedelia, eases back for an occasional vocal and builds to pummeling, skirling peaks.” -the New York Times
PEOPLE:
Ben Seretan - songs, guitars, keys, singing
Nico Hedley - bass, singing, percussion
Dan Knishkowy - drums, singing, guitar
Matt Bordin - engineering, mixing, saxophone
Recorded in three days, July 2019 at Outside Inside Studios, Montebelluna, IT
THEMES & VIBES:
Playing the guitar so hard it falls apart, longing, jubilation and exultation in song, many instances of “free” and “pond” in the songs, bringing back songs from 8 years ago (new air & free), songs from my month spent singing songs at sunrise to anyone passing by in North Carolina, folding up grief like a paper bird and watching it fly away, how fucked up can we make this, laughing constantly about “I am the bastardo di grappa,” exertion, backflips, some type of tree rodent living in the studio and we couldn’t get it out, walking on the road, trying to party hard and have as much fun as possible because that’s what our friend would have wanted us to do, seeing her lines all over
SOME FUN PICS FROM ITALY:
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Matt Bordin - - for sticking with it and with us
Gabriele - - for hanging with us, what a sweet day
Andrea Pomini - - for the gig by the river, and everything else
the Buskers Festival in Lugano
“there is thunder in our hearts” -Kate Bush
“cuore granata” -Torino FC
ALLORA captures a very particular, chaotic, cathartic moment in time - three days holed up in a stone farmhouse in the hills above Venice at the end of a wonderful but lightly disastrous tour in the summer of 2019. A power trio run ragged and wrung out having played many multiple sets at a music festival the week before (cue image of Ben heaving his guitar in the dirt, cue image of a final sixth triumphant set to a sunburnt crowd in a park on a lake). Gigs fell through left and right but they lugged a full-size harmonium onto a dozen passenger trains anyway, they smoked cigarettes out the windows, they drank little coffees in little bars. And then the rain cancelled the outdoor wedding they were all set to play, so they made a loud record instead with Matt Bordin, the legendary psych-rocker and tape-machine wizard. Everything you hear here comes from that wild three-day stay in the old stone house, once apparently used as a meeting place for anti-fascist resistance fighters in WWII. Tracking all day, bashing it out, then walking winding country roads to the closest restaurant patio, a manic, hoarse-voiced kind of paradise.
A few years out from these records, it’s hard not to hear the old world wrapped up in it - they sound almost painfully pre-pandemic, a time of fraternization and moving about, a time of playing music live for strangers. It’s obvious, too, that there’s grief in the vibrating air - this record got made and this tour took place just a couple of weeks after the death of the sculptor Devra Freelander, a bandmate whose voice you may remember from 2020’s Youth Pastoral. The raggedness skews a little mournful, a fist shaking at the sky. But it also goes extremely hard, with gnarled knots of needly guitars and a bit-champing rhythm section, especially on the ferocious opening track or the plodding “Free.” And it goes just as hard at being tender, there’s a kneeling reverence at times, like on the prayerful “every morning is a” or the 90s indie paean of “Small Times.” An overstuffed, delightfully chaotic record, wild in its particulars.
LYRICS:
NEW AIR
call me passing Okalahoma / paint a pretty picture for me / there are big things in the distance / what’s the color of his front door?
oh, we breathe new air for the first time
cough drops and bumblebees in syrup / bare feet resting on the window / when we drove to San Diego / we swam in every flooded valley
oh, we breathe new air for the first time / build a stone wall in my rib cage / so long, glad I got to know ya / burn your postcards in the kitchen sink / oh, we breathe new air for the first time
BEND:
flowers on the road / bending toward the sun / I will follow slowly / you were almost free
I could hear you singing / for the last time / I could hear you grinning / spinning out the line
bending with the weight of it / what I want could fill the world up / I will bend, not break
JUBILATION BLUES:
I was watching you and you were watching me watching you / I liked the way your eyes fell on me / I felt something almost like being free
I saw the pondwater steaming off you on the dance floor / I saw you crushing can after can of Miller High Life / I wanted to tell you something you ain’t ever heard before / I wanted to press my face to your kitchen floor
what you waiting for? / guess I’ll have one more
jubilation blues, ah
CLIMB THE LADDER:
two feet to your open arms / ten foot to the bottom of the pond / I’ll swim ‘til it’s all green and black / I’m not coming back up for air / if I had the strength to / pull myself up to where you stand / I’d look right into my own eyes / tell you how I feel about you
ah, climb the ladder in the water
SMALL TIMES:
I want you around / hold me in the small times / laughing yellow wind chimes / I want you around / hold me in cold hours / I want you around
FREE:
were it that I was free / ah, free
we were laughing /without making any sound / I sat on the uneven ground
were it that I was free / ah, free
EVERY MORNING IS A:
every morning is a / glory hallelujah