Album Review: Nino Gvilia – 'Nicole' EP : Delicate songs for desperate times.

You may have noticed a couple of quirky tunes drifting out from the home of Hive Mind Records at the back end of ’23. Delivered by ‘new’ singer songwriter Nino Gvilia, the tracks drifted illusively between the tropes of bedroom pop, eastern European folk and lo-fi experimentalism but with a real sense of purpose. These intriguing songs made you want to listen.

Nicole was the first to arrive, a gently unfolding ‘love’ song with Gvilia’s vocals, clear and fresh, calmy coaxing your attention. With the harmonium swelling to organ chords, the track opened out to soft trip-hop beats and a shimmer of Blue Nile elegance, but there was a mysterious undercurrent. Who is/was Nicole? The lyrics contained cryptic, Bjork-like conundrums from the off. ‘I can help you carry dead water tank from before I have some muscles left’ Gvilia sang while the accompanying video focused on the ethereal curls of crustaceans and sea anemones. Further investigation was needed.

Next, just before the festive plummet, came the fragile melodies of Last Trip. Here from the opening distant rumble of a jet plane, some tingling electric guitar and rootsy finger-picking bedded down beneath Gvilia and a band mate’s twinned vocals. It’s a contrast of voices that worked so well, a combination that echoed the innocence and anguish of early Sufjan Steven’s recordings. ‘Across the atoms that fall/Across the trees in our lands/last trip we go’ they sang as the ominous rumblings returned.

But that wasn’t to be the end of this introduction to the captivating music of Nino Gvilia. Now comes more in the shape of the digital version of the ‘Nicole’ EP via Hive Mind, a five track collection bookended by the already familiar title track and with Last Trip as its closing statement. In between the music we have is similarly inventive while equally poetic. Raspberry Hands is perhaps closest to what you might expect from this song-writer, rooted in folk tones by the harmonium, resolutely melodic with a sort of Balkan flourish but cannily not overdramatic. That’s down to the sensitive arrangements overseen by her collaborators on the project Zevi Bordovach (who is also on keys throughout) and Pietro Caramelli (who adds the guitars). The song suggests an earthy celebration of ‘raspberry hands’ and ‘blueberry fields’ but in no way twinkles with twee environmental friendliness. As the phrase ‘no fear’ gets repeated in the swirling coda, there seems to be something deeper and more profound at this song’s centre.

Forests, quatrain brings Gvilia’s experimental leanings (more of that later) to the fore with the hypnotic acapella revolving over an intricate field recording narrative. As the vocal harmonies mingle the sounds ease naturally from waterfalls to birdsong to duck calls to playground chatter. It’s a beautiful piece of avant-folk innocence with a fragility that gets explored further in the eerie Diaphanous. The trickling water, simple guitar plucking and quietly trilling Gvilia vocal may settle you in for some Vashti Bunyan homeliness but subtly things soon change. Words interrupt the songs flow and the string section improvise scratchily in the back ground as the song follows a ghosting, almost gothic twist.

The ’Nicole’ EP certainly stands alone as its own story but the recording is also part of a near labyrinthine release schedule which ends up with the vinyl issue of an album (due March 8th) containing these songs together with Nino Gvilia’s second EP ‘Overwhelmed by the Unexplained’. Previews of this second instalment arrive in February, so why the extended reveal? Perhaps it gives everyone more time to work with the illusion that is being played out in front of us.

Turns out that Nino Gvilia is the persona of Italian singer, sound and performance artist giulia deval, a character created to explore what being a song-writer might mean in this post-human era. Sounds opaque, well catch deval’s recent quizzical and funny interview in her Nino guise at www.truthandliesmusic.com and think further for yourself. From the quality of the music on ‘Nicole’ and the promise of things to come, what is crystal clear is that these songs stretch further than any pastiche. Through all the smoke and mirrors there is some real truth telling going on here and whatever level you engage with Nino Gvilia’s sound world, it will have an impact.