Yani Martinelli is a songwriter and musician born in Caracas and now based in Barcelona. She has lent her talents to a number of indie acts, from drumming as part of powerpop band The Seasongs to leading her own “sunshine pop” band Navyblue, as well as collaborations with the likes of The High Llamas, Ducktails and Scott Bookman. In addition to this, Martinelli has a sizeable back catalogue of solo releases, a collection of homemade albums notable for their sincerity. “Music is sacred,” Martinelli explains in the liner notes of last year’s Shelter. “My songs are something beyond myself. Every song I write I sing it as a prayer.”
Out with our friends at Fox Food Records, Fairytale Delirium is Yani Martinelli’s latest solo release. As the title might suggest, the album is an exploration of ethereal sounds, building from a base of bedroom pop into areas of psychedelia, dream pop and experimental folk, though it’s the authentic DIY attitude that really shines through. This is apparent from the opening title track, sparkling to life with dappled synths before the psych refrain adds a dash of New Age colour. The track swells from here, the backing instrumentation adding a depth beyond the charming simplicity of the vocals, and drawing the track away from accusations of being twee.
There’s a playful yet wistful air to ‘Spirits from Saturn’, a track that maintains a restrained bedroom pop style, while the haunting ‘Solarium’ shimmers beneath skating synths before eventually kicking into a near post-punk rhythm, though the vocals remain detached and floating, a satellite to the main body of the track.
‘Maps to the Deep Deep Ocean’ lives up to its name, blending a tropical lilt with something stranger, almost primordial, a song of teeming life and unknown expanses, though ‘Letter to the Moon’ immediately switches things from earthly depths to outer space. The here the languid style and electronic sparks pitch the listener as the person receiving the titular letters, encased within a low gravity, technological bubble, a thin layer between us and the wide arc of space.
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=696637737 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=106993935]
The record closes with ‘Goin To Be’, a return to the bright and grounded pop of the opening. After the transportive styles of the previous tracks, the closer feels like snapping out of a daydream, back to quotidian life. However, in true Yani Martinelli fashion, what you find around you is not rendered dull by the experience but rather heightened, everyday life made wonderful by earnest engagement, magic lurking within the simplest of things.
Fairytale Delirium is out now via Fox Food Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.
.