Best longplayer of April 2022

30 April 2022

Artist: OLI SPLEEN
Who: Singer-songwriter
from Brighton, UK

New album: STILL LIFE

Oli Spleen: Ten years ago when I was in Paris finalising my debut solo album
“Fag Machine”, I would not have believed that ten years on I’d be five albums in.”

Cover artwork: The cover art is a painting by Sara Abbott of a baby albatross,
dead from plastic consumption. Based on a photograph by Clare Fackler (NOAA
Office of National Marine Sanctuaries). In seafaring folklore, it is thought that he
who kills the albatross will be cursed. This image reflects how we as a species are
dooming ourselves and future generations in our relationship to the environment.

Turn Up the Volume: Oftenly, hard times can be an artistic inspiration for
musicians (for all sorts of artists, actually). It can work or not for the psyche
of the listener. Here it works magnificently.

Spleen constructed 10 sonic paintings about his struggle for life, about
soul-destroying and physical pain, and doubts about the present and
the future.

10 heartfelt, tender, and very intimate ballads, at times distressing, at times mournful,
but in the end, there’s hope, redemption, and lust for life. Spleen‘s voice is both doleful
and warm, just like star crooners such as Nick Cave, Father John Misty, The National‘s maestro Matt Berninger and most of all the midnight hour voice of Tindersticks maestro Stuart Staples sound.

Ten pearls about suffering and surviving.
A poignant and riveting work. Don’t miss it.

Stream/buy Still Life here…

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OLI SPLEEN: Facebook – All Albums on Bandcamp