Allora by Ben Seretan

Written and recorded in 2019 just before the pandemic, Allora by Ben Seretan conjures our memories of a time when grief was much more personal and innocent. Seretan’s outsider rock style emphasizes his possession of these tragic thoughts, expressing the bargaining stage of grief with incredible clarity in the broad dynamic valleys between free jazz freakouts. These solitary proclamations in such a distinctive inflection draw attention to the inherent loneliness of grief, but the coming year and a half of pandemic upheaval would of course kick this isolation into overdrive for many of us, separating families before, during, and after their loved ones’ final moments. Perhaps should this album have been composed a year later, we would hear more of its desperate moments of krautrock chaos, vocalizing those deeply held frustrations that feel too melancholic or complicated to properly put into words. Even today, years later, we wonder whether we’ll ever return to our own concise, lyrical balladry of feelings or if we’ll spend the rest of our days in this chaotic, incomprehensible, freeform emotional frontier.