Bellini Album: "Small Stones" Release Date: 09/06/2005 Label: Temporary Residence Rev Value: [7.0/10] Genre: Rock Styles: Indie Rock Buy It

Tracklist:

1 Room Number Five (3:35)
2 Fuck the Mobile Phone (2:06)
3 Exact Distance to the Stars (3:33)
4 Buffalo Song (3:14)
5 Not Any Man (3:21)
6 Chaser (2:56)
7 Smiling Fear (3:26)
8 Switched Lovers (2:40)
9 Raymond (3:39)
10 Agatha (2:18)

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review by:Artist Direct
reviewer: ~ Rob Theakston
Album Value: (4/5)

Though many of the landmark bands that changed the course of post-rock in the late '90s are gone, there are a few labels that keep the house lights on just in case there are still fans of the sound out there who crave more. One of these labels, Temporary Residence, has become a haven for the sound circa 2005, and the latest offering from Bellini only solidifies that notion further. Returning three years after their debut, Bellini reenlisted friend/sound guru Steve Albini for Small Stones, and the results are exactly what you'd expect from an Albini production: fierce, crisp, and confrontational. Bellini follow Albini's lead nicely, bringing glacier-paced drones and mixed-meter uptempo numbers to peak boiling points, with Girls Against Boys alumnus Alexis Fleisig being the central force keeping everything glued together nicely. There's nothing groundbreaking on Small Stones, but Bellini have definitely pushed themselves to explore new territories and dynamics that weren't found on their first record, a feat that is no small accomplishment by any stretch.

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review by:Pitchfork
reviewer: Austin Gaines, September 27, 2005
Album Value: (7.3/10)

Bellini aren't crunk or grime. They aren't on any freak-folk compilations. They aren't the daughters of Sri Lankan rebels, and I doubt they own a Detroit techno 12" or anything that would have been played at the Paradise Garage. I suppose that makes Bellini just good ol' math rock-- the mid- to late-90s kind on Touch and Go and Quarterstick. This figures, as Giovanna Cacciola (vocals) and Agostino Tilotta (Guitar) were in Uzeda, and Alexis Fleisig (drums) was in Girls Against Boys.

Bellini's previous album, Snowing Sun, worked thanks to the bionic drumming of Damon Che from Don Cabellero. But then again that was a few years ago, when the world was simpler. It was also prior to the comi-tragic departure of Che, which would provide tabloid-esque fodder for the indie rock world.

Today, Bellini sound like...well, Uzeda. Cacciola still takes her English lyrics and morphs them into that of a mourning siren from a Giallo film. Tilotta's guitar work still consists of sharp jabs played at high volume, sounding reminiscent of Shellac. Maybe that's because Steve Albini is still recording Cacciola and Tilotta. The oft-forgotten rhythm section of Fleisig and Matthew Taylor both fulfill their job duties and make sure the songs drive forward, without any of the screwing around that was present on Snowing Sun.

"The Buffalo Song" finds Cacciola yelling over some fine post-rock noodling/riffery; Bellini switch it up on "Not Any Man" which has Cacciola mellowing out and cooing, "Say I called you my love" like a mix of Tara Jane ONeil and PJ Harvey. Bellini move from crescendo to groove in "The Exact Distance to the Stars" while Cacciola mixes surrealistic bedroom behavior with existentialism.

All in all, Small Stones is a cohesive album, but its songs just plod down a road that is already heavily trafficked. But then again if you love their style of music, then it's nice to have a band like Bellini that's gonna consistently give you albums of the same quality, even if they only arrive every three years.

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review by: Prefix Mag
reviewer: Etan Rosenbloom
Album Value: (3.5/5)

On a map, Italy’s boot looks like it’s trying desperately to kick Sicily away. And why shouldn’t it? Given what little I know about Sicily, life there seems brutish and inhospitable. If you manage to avoid being smothered by a lava flow from Mt. Etna, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, you’ll probably get whacked by the Corleone family. Even the square shape of Sicilian pizza suggests rigidity, impenetrability.

So maybe it’s not so surprising that Bellini’s core creative unit, Sicilians Giovanna Cacciola and her husband Agostino Tilotta, make some of the most abrasive and uncompromising noise-rock imaginable. With their former band, Uzeda, the two spiked the Jesus Lizard’s drunken noir with a shot of discordant, Unwound-style racket. That basic template hasn’t changed too much since Uzeda morphed into Bellini in mid-2001. Though Bellini’s 2002 debut, Snowing Sun, was less assaultive than the Uzeda material, it was really a difference of execution, not concept. Bellini complicated its pummel by bringing aboard bassist Matthew Taylor and Don Caballero’s Shiva-like drummer Damon Che, but the emphasis was still on tricky, indomitable grooves and dual-vocal/guitar strangulation. (...)

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review by: Leo Beat
reviewer: Stephen George
Album Value: (-/-)

The question I’d like to ask Agostino Tilotta, Bellini’s guitarist, is elementary: How do you make a guitar sound like metal being hurled through a wood chipper without being abrasive? The answer is a quarter of why Bellini is top tier in the so-named indie rock echelons. Bellini brings the scuzz without the stink, champions of forbearance where they could slap on layers of chops, open and airy but still in your face. Like a friend’s fist hanging just above your shoulder, waiting for you to be the one to turn into it, Bellini resists the temptation to dazzle with the musicianship that’s clearly there, wooing instead with their ability to compress calculated riffs and off-time beats into something Giovanna Cacciola — whose voice is an unadulterated article of beauty — can sing over. One among a record of standouts, “The Exact Distance to the Stars” partners requisite angles in guitar-and-bass work with the crushing straight-arrow drive — And it’s not enough/This is not enough — that transcends Cacciola’s beatific accent and pushes her throat to fray. A magnificent, bullshit-free record. Bellini plays Uncle Pleasant’s, 2126 Preston St., on Tuesday,

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review by: BoomKat
reviewer:??
Album Value: (-/-)

Bellini are relatively famous (and I caution you against taking that 'relatively' as anything other than a gross over-exaggeration) for having their band leader and "notorious troublemaker" Damon Che quit live on stage in Athens, GA, stranding the Italio rockers on the wrong side of the Atlantic sans airline tickets. Labelled as their 'triumphant comeback', 'Small Stones' is Bellini's second full-length and the first to feature Alexis Fleisig (Girls Against Boys, Soulside) on drums. Recorded in a studio which appears to have contained Steve Albini in some capacity, Bellini took just 5 days to complete; a rapidity which lends the album a tenebrous quality. Distilling elements of post-rock, punk-rock, The Stooges, Billy Corgan, Melt Banana, Sonic Youth and all manner of leather trousered cliché's down into manageable chunks, songs like 'Room Number Five', 'Smiling Fear' and (in particular) 'The Exact Distance to The Stars', horripilate (look it up) with an attitude often lacking in today's shiny Kerrang sanitized rock scene. Bolstered by a fantastic vocalist in the shape of Giovanna Cacciola, Bellini are big, clever and (most importantly) feverishly contagious. See you at Donnington.

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review by: Satellite Magazine
reviewer: Ashley Baird
Album Value: (-/-)

Your drummer quits the band in an on-stage breakdown and leaves you stranded with no vehicle or drummer. What do you do? Throw in the towel? No. Cancel the rest of your tour and go home? I don’t think so. You phone an old friend and ask for help. You get a new drummer, a better one, someone like Alexis Fleisig of Girls Against Boys and Soulside who can learn all the songs in one whole day. And then you finish your tour. This is what happened to the Italian/NYC/Austin quartet Bellini. This is their story. They are a rhythmic, tight, beautifully aggressive band consisting of Agostino Tilotta, his wife Giovanna Cacciola (both of Italy’s famed Uzeda), bassist Matthew Taylor (the Romulans) and drummer Fleisig. Small Stones, their second album, is more intense and more melodic with a relentless rhythm section that is more astute than on their previous album, Snowing Sun. Cacciola’s vocals exude a luring siren of earthy vibrations that sends you on a dark, tragic drive to emotion and its interests. “The Buffalo Song,” the fourth track on the album, leaves you in an unrelenting state of suspense through to the very end. The guitar riffs and escalations are indicative of a pumped-up haunted moon. The final song on the album, Agatha, is an instrumental overhaul of breaking drumbeats and guitar stabs that leads you from one destination to another. The whole album feeds the living requirements of an unfortunate desire that each instrument tongues at, licking off the impurities with each note administered. And, if this is their enduring goal, then Small Stones is definitely some great reward

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review by: Brainwashed
reviewer: Nick Feeley
Album Value: (-/-)
Bellini appeared to have stumbled out of a time machine. Their barbed guitar hooks, thumping rhythm section, and obtuse lyricism seem strangely out of place in 2005. One listen through songs like “Room Number Five” and “The Buffalo Song” make things remarkably clear: Bellini belong in 1993.

Though I don't mean this in a patronizing way, it's hard to argue with it after one listen through their second release, Small Stones. Over the course of ten songs, the band pumps out a series of pick-scraped riffs and thrusting drums that would make any crusty college radio jock happy. The obvious touchstones are on proud display on Small Stones; Slint, The Jesus Lizard, Circus Lupus. All of this adds up to an album that, though not quite the remarkable accomplishment it could be, is an assured and rugged set of songs. A lot of the credit needs to go to guitarist Agostino Tilotta, who knows how to write jagged riffs that aren't lacking in melody. On songs like "Smiling Fear," his guitar playing is anchored in place by the solid time keeping of drummer Alexis Fleisig (a name you might recognize as the drummer from Girls Against Boys) and bassist Matthew Taylor. Over top of all this, singer Giovanna Cacciola moans out vague lines. Cacciola is the other linchpin on this album, her voice wavers from a soft coo to an assertive holler, all delivered in her deep and accented voice. Elsewhere, songs like "Raymond" crawls along a spiny guitar part and slow drum fills as the tensions slowly builds to a climax. While Bellini aren't radically changing the way guitar rock is made or heard in 2005, Small Stones exudes such confidence and swagger that it can't help but not be ignored.

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