Master melodist Yani Martinelli reaches career high on album featuring arrangement by High Llamas leader Sean O’Hagan
Anyone who’s followed the career of Yani Martinelli over the past 14 years will know that, above all else, she’s a master of melody and harmony. The kind of flowing melody that immediately piqued the interest of The High Llamas’ leader, Sean O’Hagan - no mean melodist himself - whom she first met around 2011 after sending him her cover of a Llamas song.
The melodies are stronger than ever on her 8th album Polaris, the first on which Sean gets an arranger’s credit. But what’s especially new this time is that finally she has the sumptuous production to match. Along with her trademark cuatro, Spanish guitar and piano, there are lavish strings, brass and woodwind cushioning vocal harmonies that are deeper and plusher than ever before.
As she once said: "My songs are something beyond myself. Every song I write, I sing it as a prayer." And all are offered in the service of a love for nature that permeates every last second of the album. The titles alone signal what’s afoot - there are sparrows, geckos, trees - not forgetting Zerynthia Rumina, a beautiful Spanish butterfly.
Yani can still turn out fabulous melodies too, of course. It’s easy to imagine Sean hearing When I Was a Tree for the first time and being mightily impressed, while knowing his typically ingenious arrangement would lift the song still further. Fans of the Beach Boys will also detect copious quantities of the band’s late-period albums, from Smile to 20-20, not to mention the sunshine pop and psychedelia of the period.
This time around Yani also drew inspiration from her friend Jamie Brewster, a microbiologist and sometime lyricist, whose video about the arcane process of converting seaweed into beer miraculously resulted in When I Was a Tree!
All told, on Polaris a similarly arcane process occurs: the conversion of colourful and unexpected ingredients into a gorgeous concoction that constantly surprises, shapeshifting between Californian languor and joyous Latin American jazz - even the odd splash of bubbling Stereolab electronics. The whole album is a scintillating trip for body, heart and mind.
