Marta Del Grandi has refined the overriding, lasting impression her new music leaves upon the listener with the title Dream Life, as this is very much the place both artist and audience find themselves occupying with this album. Not quite, at least not always, the deep dream state we go to, accompanying the soundest of sleeping. More often that hazy, half-awake spot where the real and the imagined can merge. True-to-life details, memories, locations, and people spin around the mind’s eye in both believable and fantastical scenarios, the past playing tricks on the present or jumping into the future in a melange of imagery and voices. And then, when you properly awake, it can take some time to recalibrate the senses to what is real and what was dreamed. Moments that seemed so vital when experiencing the dream can disappear in a flash, sometimes never to be retrieved. As this album gently introduces itself with the sound of a caressed melodic pattern on a harp, it is as if we are already there, maybe not in our own dream but certainly with a fly-on-the-wall view of the soundscapes and pictures that abound in Marta Del Grandi’s mind. You Could Perhaps echoes the breathing of a body in slumber with exhales of harmonium sound, then lets the clutter of the outside world rudely interrupt with drum punctuations. It makes for a bold entrance and a sharp-focused introduction to the album.
The Italian singer-songwriter is releasing this new album on Fire Records; this is her first new material since the 2023 record Selva, which earned some deserved positive attention at the time (described in KLOF as astute pop, experimental electronica, and driving modern folk ballads). Now, with this fresh venture into creativity and expression, Marta likens that previous collection to a gallery of oil paintings, but she sees ‘Dream Life’ as having “a more contemporary approach, with lyrics touching political and social issues, a more explicit personal storytelling and a more defined pop sound. It’s more like a photobook, more defined and detailed.” As a self-assessment, this is certainly true, although if I were to put Marta in any pop music scenario, she would definitely be closer to the art-pop of say David Byrne or St Vincent, far more than a Charli XCX. In fact, the quirky, stuttering nature of the vocal on the title track, not to mention the sudden shifts in tempo after a deceptively conventional guitar strumming start, are a little like Cate Le Bon. So yes, this is pop music, but it is pop music from a world where the pop charts are filled with artists making interesting, ground-breaking music rather than a parade of identikit interchangeable marketing campaigns.
Antarctica is an out-and-out pop moment and brilliantly executed too. The backbone squeaking pulse feels icy and cold, but the rhythms that erupt are of an African world music hue, while the brass and choppy guitars that dance around Marta’s staccato singing positively demand some body movement; this is seriously good stuff. But this is an album awash with contrasts. Later, a short instrumental titled Gold Mine conjures a bleak, post-industrial landscape. 20 Days Of Summer has a teasing bass at the beginning; the expectation is that this one too will explode in a blaze of rhythm and energy. But Marta seems to delight in wrong-footing her audience, for when this one does erupt, it does so by spraying us listeners up into the clouds and floating back in the dream space we arrived in previously. We find her staring up to the sky on Shoe Shaped Cloud, which broods deliciously and without unnecessary sentimentality on the subject of a relationship that has faltered.
Alpha Centauri finds the singer once more in a shimmering headspace that opens her up for nostalgic reflection, this time back to her teenage years, where a re-connection with an inner child of old is evocatively realised, the music pushing this sensation too with a genuinely rousing conclusion to the number wherein Marta had initially used a more angelic and vulnerable tone. Neon Lights again defies easy labelling or description. The song is delicate like snowfall in its opening bars, all descending chords and light brush strokes, but in the space of a bar, we are moved into the realms of angular, abrasive electric guitars, which return later in the song with an even sharper edge, before the whole thing disappears in a flash. Some Days, featuring Fenne Kuppens, is a ghostly duet that sounds like it is rising from the depths of a cave. Finally, Oh My Father asks the kind of questions that typically arise after a period of reflection, beautifully turning into a hymn-like beast with warm brass instrumentation and a big, morning-sunrise finish. If this is the sound of pop music in 2026, then I fully expect to be a paid-up, chart-loving pop picker by the end of the year. But even if that is not to be, this will remain a mighty fine album.
Source: klofmag.com