Saturnine | Remembrance of Things Past

Before moving to NYC in the early 90's and starting the indie rock band Saturnine with guitarist/vocalist Matt Galloway, bassist Mike Donofrio grew up in Vermont. Plus, he has since moved back to the Green Mountains from the Big Apple. So, I think it's safe to call Saturnine's new album Remembrance of Things Past a "Vermont album" even if the rest of the band is scattered across the country. That's close enough for me.

Remembrance of Things Past is a very literary album based upon the same-titled work by French writer Marcel Proust. I'm not making that up...I'm sure all of The Decemberists fans out there will love that. Regardless, I'm a simpleton and always fall for the melody, beat and progression of a song before the lyrics hit me. That's exactly what has happened with RoTP. Right from the opening bass line, you get swept along on a melodic flow that brings you up for rocking moments before coming back down for quiet darker sounds. While I'm not a big "concept album" guy, the whole album flows well together rather than listening to it in individual tracks.

One other highlight of the album is that Saturnine scored Frances Gibson of The Cannanes to do the female vocals. She even gets a cool spoken word riff in towards the end of "Marcel Remembers He Tried To Stop His Obsession For Albertine" which, if you are a Cannanes fan, will remind you of the one on The Cannanes' "3-Way Release".

Besides the music, the other cool thing about the album is that's it's been released using a creative commons license. So, the band is allowing bloggers and fans to link to all the tracks for general sharing. So, go ahead, download and link away.

With that in mind, Bradley's Alamanc has a lengthy post up about the album including tracks from some of their earlier releases.

Saturnine | Remembrance of Things Past

"Marcel Remembers The Summer He Met Albertine"

"Later, At A Bar"

"Albertine"

"Marcel Remembers He Tried To Stop His Obsession For Albertine"

"I Can't Shake Her From My Mind"

"Some Months Later, At A Club In New York City,
Marcel Sees Albertine Dancing With Another Girl
(With Whom He Suspects She Is Having An Affair)
And Leaves, Jealous And Upset"

"Later, On A Walk Together"

"Later, Albertine Alone At The Apartment"

Or download all eight 192kbps Mp3s as one 58MB zip file.

Or download higher quality versions of each song at the Internet Music Archive.