I had been alerted to receiving this record from Furry Heart in Italy by label head Edwina who began to panic when it seemed like it wasn't going to show up because of my change of address. Lo and behold though it did, and both Edwina and I are very glad about that. Lovexpress is an Italian avant garde rock band, with three members, one of which I know. Luca Collivasone - prepared guitar, synth,vocals; Daniele La Barbera - drums, vocals; Lorenzo Chiesa - synth, samples, vocals. It's obviously Luca that I know as I recently reviewed his 'Rumpus Room' release. The one-sheet (actually a two-sheet) I received on the band and the album was rather minimal on band bio concentrating on the band concept and the present album. I did find out online they had a previous release back in 2017, but more than that, I dunno. Lovexpress (aka LUVXPSS) is an unusual sort of rock band. For one thing, Luca plays prepared guitar, the instrument lying on a flat surface, using a non-standard tuning, and played with a multitude of objects, lending a certain unpredictability to the music. Not that it doesn't sound like a guitar, but often more of an avant garde jazz sound than rock, although the music is still rooted in rock. Synths are (mostly) monophonic and generally minimal, with lots of quirky analogue sounds and not used in a typical synthpop way. Drumming is somewhat jazzy and punchy (certainly came across as punchy on the vinyl) and the songs...well, they're out there but not so far as to lose their effectiveness.

I think I can attribute the overall flavor to Mr. Collivasone, who seems to handle most of the lead vocals. A good portion of his vocals are spoke-sung, more like hipster poetry than any conventional pop singing, but he does melodic at times as well. 'The Million Year Girl' is eight tracks in the span of 41 minutes, fairly average for an LP. The opener, "Cracking Knuckles" sets the tone for the rest of the album- somewhat languid with abstract guitar, farty synth bass, modified half-time shuffle rhythm, and Luca's semi-deadpan delivery - "What in the world's come over me? You show me things I should never perceive. Holding your face mock(?) integrity, the unicorn leaps over crystal dreams...Bubble childs look after, double aromatic caster, cracking knuckles, disaster, goddesses of alabaster..." and more to that effect, with a good amount of guitar improvisation in the mix. I especially enjoyed Luca's "hibbity-bibbity-bobbity-boo" (at least what I call it) descending guitar riff on this song. The most memorable thing about the title track (“The Million Year Girl”) was the euro-siren synth , although the song is part straight-ahead rocker and part art oddity. "Summer of Love" works better, sounding very much like a psychotic psychedelic rocker at first with a very catchy, simple chorus. Gotta love the wah-wah on the guitar too. Where things fall apart a little is when the sampled broadcast material about the Manson murders comes in. Uh, that technically wasn't the Summer of Love (it was a couple years later), but whatever. I'm not keen on extended sampled dialogue anyway.

Moving on, some of "Do What To Do" reminded me a bit of Dali's Car, that Peter Murphy/Mick Karn 1984 collaboration, and that's not a bad thing. "Nothing" recalls the minimal wave of '80s bands like Ruins and Savant, not that many people remember them; largely instrumental and dancey. "Expanding" is like Per Ubu meets Revolting Cocks in the Butthole Surfers' basement. "Too Many Hangups" is perhaps the most normal song on the album, and consequently the least interesting. It all ends with "Voodoo," which seemed reminiscent of Stan Ridgway's Drywall project, and of course, he was Wall of Voodoo's original singer. Still, I liked the song a lot and it provided a satisfying conclusion to the album.

Although I found 'The Million Year Girl' to be an uneven album, there is a lot more good stuff on it than just okay, and as a limited edition on 180 gram vinyl (100 copies only), it's a worthy buy. When Furry Heart runs out of that, there's always the CD. Just one question for Luca- why no cacophonator on the album?