(Last week Peaceville released the ninth studio album by the revamped Italian band Novembre, and as our DGR is a long-term follower of the band’s music, there’s no one here better suited to review it — which he does below.)
It could never be perfect, one guesses, that the timelines of releases would line up perfectly so that the opening ‘fun with statistics’ paragraph could already be pre-written for us. Alas though, we do find ourselves cycling back around anyway with Italy’s Novembre, who’ve returned to us after another near ten-year period of inactivity as a renewed creature and full band.
It has been close to nine and a half years since the group’s previous album Ursa was let loose upon the world, to unleash its melancholy and general sadness upon unsuspecting citizens who might’ve thought they would be enjoying a beautiful spring and bright summer back in April of 2016. We’ll just gloss over the fact that yours truly actually scribbled something up about the album at that time as well, itself a victim of a long retreat from the public eye on the band’s part.
Yet even as a new creature, Novembre find themselves existing in cycles, and their newest album Words Of Indigo springs to life just as we enter the cold peace of Winter in the Northern Hemisphere yet somehow still finds itself conjuring up the spirits of blue-hued cover arts and siblings of old, as if it were the unintentional completion of a trilogy begun all the way back in 2002 with Dreams D’Azur, revitalized in 2007’s The Blue, and now 18 years later summoned once again for the aforementioned Words Of Indigo.
Novembre are a storied group at this point in their career; a couple of extended breaks between albums has stretched that career well into the thirty-year mark. The group were founded upon a formula of melancholy and doom that labels like Peaceville had gained a reputation for, and it is fitting that the band have themselves been part of that roster at times.
Italy has been a verdant green of musical acts over the years, and that includes various death, doom, and goth metal groups that have all found themselves in a circular orbit of influences around one another. Novembre themselves have had members dance in and out of their lineups as well, and with them has seen those same influences become suffused into the band’s sound. There had even been a solid core of members in that time as well, with the Orlando crew of Guiseppe and Carmelo traveling together until 2015 and then guitarist Massimiliano Pagliuso staying within the group’s lineup ’til earlier this year.
Now, Novembre find themselves driven forward with Carmelo at the helm and a whole new collective gathered together to keep the creature alive and vibrant. Given the extended gaps between Novembre’s previous albums, Words Of Indigo marks their first time together in recorded form. When laid out on paper, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Novembre were almost a brand new band. Right up until “Sun Magenta” begins anyway, and then it seems that no matter who is behind the helm of Novembre, they’re going to sound like the past clawing its way back into the present.
Words Of Indigo plays out like a whirlwind tour of Novembre’s career, and that includes the conjuring and supplication of many of the band’s previous incarnations. The fragility that has defined Novembre’s sound over the years is presented immediately in “Sun Magenta”, and though there are some interesting vocal choices in the song – the sung melodies travel very high, to put it politely, and Novembre take some risks that don’t quite play out – the song itself is an immediate bath of familiarity. The quiet and resigned despair that has been a Novembre trademark makes for moments of honest beauty within “Sun Magenta” and that first song lays much of the groundwork for Words Of Indigo as a whole.
Novembre drift their way through gorgeous guitar-driven segments and a bouncing rhythm line that, again, will be like gazing twenty years past for metal fans who’ve followed the melodramatics of this subsection of the doom tree over the years. Novembre are playing it close to home for much of Words Of Indigo but it is rare that you ever feel like you can see the gears turning as the band are re-establishing themselves for the second time after a nine-year break. It is as if Novembre decided to replicate the experience of unleashing The Blue again after Materia so many years ago, by tying together Words Of Indigo and Ursa before it – in spite of the time between them.
One other thing that does remain has been Novembre’s flair for atmospherics and instrumentals. Words Of Indigo fails nobody in that regard, allowing plenty of room for Novembre to be indulgent as can be. Though there are only two marked instrumentals within Words Of Indigo’s lineup, the album asks of you an hour-plus of time. That’s an ambitious track listing to say the least – especially in our current attention-melting age – for the auditory equivalant of having your hand pressed up against a cracked window while it snows outside.
But then, the question would be where to trim throughout the disc because dropping a second from a full run of Words Of Indigo means the release doesn’t quite work, especially as the album constructs multiple peaks and valleys to travel down during that time frame right up until the pairing of “Post Poetic” and “Onde” at the end. Those previously mentioned peaks and valleys are also part of the reason why most of the songs present here wander past the six-minute mark with ease, save for one of the aforementioned instrumentals and the gorgeously uptempo (for Novembre) “Your Holocene” following that.
Whether intentional or not though, the early part of Words Of Indigo seems to revolve around the cinematic storytelling of “House of Rain”, built around a bombastic melodic line and the return of guest vocalist Ann-Mari Edvardsen to sing again, having made her previous appearance all the way back on the group’s 2001 album Novembrine Waltz for a cover of the song “Cloudwalking”. “House Of Rain” is a song that is an easy highlight among a strong batch of opening contenders on Words Of Indigo.
“Neptunian Hearts” and “Brontide” bookending the song, for instance, are both journeys through the cold and distant that are well befitting the emotionally disconnected singing that has defined Novembre’s sound over the years. “House Of Rain” then sticks out because it requires that everyone be brought to the forefront. No one is allowed to sit in the background and whisper their way through the song; it rollicks upon the waves in comparison. There is a sense of immediacy to “House of Rain” that isn’t present in previous songs. The fifteen minutes preceeding it on Words Of Indigo are relaxing in their sadness in contrast to the up-front nature of “House of Rain”. But, when asked to go ‘big’ on a song, Novembre answer in kind and make for an early disc highlight in response.
Novembre perform a stunning act with Words Of Indigo because it seems like the band never went into a period of inactivity between albums. The group’s sound has vacillated between theatrical displays of melancholy, beautiful fragility, and indulgent depression over the years, and it has been the story of Novembre that the past few albums have been the ones to tie all of those elements together.
You’d never tell, in listening to Words Of Indigo, that this was basically a wholly refreshed Novembre and that there was another nine-plus-year gap in the band’s career between releases. The new album picks up right where Ursa left off while also touring its way through Novembre’s entire career. The early comparisons between the blue-themed albums of the band’s early-aughts work aren’t just fun bits of serendipity. Novembre themselves resurrect many long-lost spirits throughout Words Of Indigo and use those previous foundational acts to construct a new launching point for the band.
What is past is present, what is old is new, and the reliability of an emotionally disconnected singing style to make for some absolutely beautiful moments of music is an ever-green one. Words Of Indigo may be constructed out of a wholly new form for Novembre but you could never really tell, because Novembre have made an album perfectly in line with all of their previous works.
https://novembre_peaceville.lnk.to/words_of_indigo
https://peaceville.bandcamp.com/album/words-of-indigo
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https://www.instagram.com/novembre_band/