Marta del Grandi – Selva (2023) [FLAC 24bit/48kHz]

Marta del Grandi – Selva (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 41:20 minutes | 439 MB | Genre: Indie Folk, Art Pop, Female Vocal
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Fire Records

Italian singer songwriter Marta Del Grandi returns with Selva, her most intricate and shimmering effort yet, a refined devotional suite of astute pop that flows effortlessly, uniting emotional complexity, divine organic arrangements with a sci-fi finish.

If her debut Until We Fossilize showed all the qualities of Marta’s unique approach, tip-toeing between Laurel Canyon dust, Lynchian etherealism and dramatic Morricone scores, Selva delves deeper into the undergrowth, showcasing an ambition to deliver a whole new universe, her own ecosystem, where the strength of her voice alone is the pillar to build on.

Beams of choral light radiate and permeate each track, with layered vocal drones creating a cathartic collision of sharp and soft textures, as almost to guide us hand in hand across Marta Del Grandi’s enchanted universe. The ambition is blinding and the outcome is here to prove it: 12 songs of sprawling ethereal pop that is vivid, immense and fully illuminated.Taking influence from sounds and styles ranging from the Laurel Canyon scene to exotica and film scores by likes of Morricone and Badalamenti, onetime working jazz vocalist Marta Del Grandi introduced her highly stylized art pop on Until We Fossilize in 2021. It was self-produced in her native Italy with contributions from collaborators in Brooklyn. While that album’s subject matter was heavily inspired by world travel, she followed it up two years later with the more personal Selva (Italian for “forest”). For this album, she enlisted a co-producer, Bert Vliegen (Sophia, Whispering Sons), who helped her fashion a more muscular, bass-clef-heavy sound that was tracked in Ghent, Belgium. The set list opens with a section of off-center a cappella, multi-tracked by Del Grandi before exacting, unison bass and synth arpeggios lay down a tense backdrop for lyrics like, “There I found you/Huddled in your wounded heart/Acting like I wasn’t there.” That song, “Mata Hari,” soon expands to include a driving drum kit, a booming low drum, brass, woodwinds, guitars, and more, as the singer reflects on the value of love (“If not for love we’d be just like shadows”). Throughout the rest of Selva, art songs like the part-chant, partly cacophonous “Snapdragon,” the chamber piece “Polar Bear Village,” and the Italian-language title track, with its heavily edited singing and whispering voices, are balanced by more structured pop like the grungy, swaying rock ballad “Stay,” the lilting synth folk entry “Marble Season,” and the earnest “Two Halves,” which ornaments strummed acoustic guitar with murmuring electronic noise (“I’m divided into two halves/One’s humming to herself/And one needs to show them”). After keeping listeners both beguiled and off-balance through 11 tracks, Selva ends with the bittersweet, organ-guided “End of the World, Pt. 2,” in which Del Grandi literally dreams of having it all as she drifts off to sleep. – Marcy Donelson

Tracklist:

01. Marta del Grandi – Mata Hari (03:47)
02. Marta del Grandi – Eye of the Day (03:11)
03. Marta del Grandi – Chameleon Eyes (03:28)
04. Marta del Grandi – Snapdragon (03:12)
05. Marta del Grandi – Marble Season (04:28)
06. Marta del Grandi – End of the World Pt. 1 (03:18)
07. Marta del Grandi – Two Halves (03:48)
08. Marta del Grandi – Polar Bear Village (02:01)
09. Marta del Grandi – Good Story (04:05)
10. Marta del Grandi – Selva (03:50)
11. Marta del Grandi – Stay (03:30)
12. Marta del Grandi – End of the World Pt. 2 (02:37)

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