Bernardino Femminielli Soundtracks the Darkest Corners of the Discotheque

This week, we say goodbye to New York’s Other Music record shop, closing its glass doors just short of its 20th birthday. The amount of under-the-radar musicians we will never get to encounter via their open-eared recommendations is still impossible to register, but it just got harder for artists and potential fans to connect.

I bring it up in discussing Bernardino Femminielli’s “Plaisirs Américains” as it would have been a shoo-in for prominent placement in OM’s “La Decadanse” section. The record store equivalent of the low-lit, leather-cushioned back booth in the shop, it was where the likes of Serge Gainsbourg, Mick Harvey, Air, and Momus CDs all had their own place.

While he’s a collaborator with the likes of Dirty Beaches, Femminielli is firmly entrenched in this disheveled yet elegant lineage of the aforementioned gents. And on “Plaisirs Américains,” he weds his grody, croaked whisper to the most effervescent of musical backdrops. There’s the steady rising of the hi-hat and kick, the elegant grand piano chords and synth arpeggios entwining to create lift-off. Hoarsely whispering about “American pleasures,” it soundtracks both outer space and the darkest corner of the discotheque.

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