Audio By Carbonatix
Jennifer Gentle is not the girl next door. With one ear pressed to Donovan’s Greatest Hits and the other to Elephant 6, she produces giddy, psychedelic pop that comes from a parallel universe in which the Partridge Family dropped acid and joined the circus. Disappointingly, the girl next door never does that. Kazoos, glockenspiels, harmoniums — even a deflating-balloon solo — augment her off-kilter ditties. Most notably, though, Ms. Gentle is actually an all-male duo from Padova, Italy. On their American debut, Valende, Marco Fasolo and Alessio Gastaldello prove that their idiosyncratic take on psych pop cannot be contained by conventional instrumentation or orthodox songwriting. The record is stuffed with blissful toe-tappers, splatter paintings of noise, and dreamy twigs floating lazily downstream. You never know what you’ll get with Jennifer Gentle, but it’s always intriguing. Unlike the girl next door.
When news happens, Westword is there —
Your support strengthens our coverage.
We’re aiming to raise $50,000 by December 31, so we can continue covering what matters most to this community. If Westword matters to you, please take action and contribute today, so when news happens, our reporters can be there.
