REVIEW: Fredo Viola — My New Head (LP)
It’s hard to make a simple masterpiece when you have as much to say as singer and songwriter Fredo Viola does in the album My New Head; nonetheless, armed with a natural talent he isn’t afraid to use to his advantage, the skilled player does this across eleven of the more intriguing songs I’ve heard in the past season.
My New Head is, as its title would hint at, a very psychologically calculated effort that doesn’t translate as being the product of improvisation. There’s a sonic profoundness to the instrumental intro in “Demolition” that spreads across every song that follows, and even he’s not trying to move mountains with his words, there’s a poetic strength to Viola’s verses that can be overwhelming when consumed all at once. It’s recommended to us that we listen to this LP without interruption from beginning to end, and if you have the emotional capacity to handle the raw energy it produces in liberal doses, the experience it can provide listeners with is among the more significant I would imagine coming across in all of the year 2021. I was excited to cover this piece, and taking a look at its tracklist should give you a pretty good clue as to why.
BANDCAMP: https://fredoviola.bandcamp.com/album/my-new-head
The instruments take us where lyrics cannot in “In My Mouth,” “Edwin Vargas,” the erratic “Kick the Sick” and equally volatile “Black Box,” and it’s through this depth that we’re able to grasp the validity of Viola’s words in standout singles like “Pine Birds” and “Clouded Mirror.” I will say that without taking all of the content in this LP at once, you don’t get the same heaviness in the story that ultimately comes about when analyzing the messages in each song one after another, but this isn’t a bad thing if you’re as enraptured by the juxtaposition of compositional minimalism and unfiltered confessions as I am. This mix is definitely as much a component of the narrative’s structure as anything being played or sung in “Stars and Rainbows,” “Waiting for Seth” and “My Secret Power,” and even for a progressive album like this one, there’s nothing here that isn’t pushing the envelope towards unexpectedly cinematic fodder.
Fredo Viola isn’t a newcomer to the spotlight, but for a veteran of the game, he certainly sounds energized in every one of the tracks on My New Head. He’s rolling like a classically-trained professional who doesn’t have anything left to prove to the audience or the critics who would assign this LP a specific place in the pool of amazing albums to come out of the woodwork this year, and that means everything when it comes to giving us organic magic in the studio. There’s something new to discover with every listen the blanket of melodies and poetic revelations in My New Head is granted, and while I’m usually not the biggest fan of concept albums because of the camp and excess they frequently contain, this is a solid offering that doesn’t have any room for such nonsense in its material.
Colin Jordan
