Cities Built On Cities is Joe Geni's third album and is a love letter to Long Island City that can also be read as a look at how cities evolve and re-invent themselves over time, adding layer upon layer to the original structure. Joe plays all the instruments apart from the drums played by Mikhail Sapozhnikov the album was produced and mixed by Charlie Nieland.
The album opens with Cities Built On Cities a rather pensive look at how many cities are many layered, built over centuries, evolving and mutating over an 80's fusion rock backing with a twisting bassline, the imagery is built slowly.
City Where The Sky Subsides has elements of Psychedelic Furs and Simple Minds in the slightly bombastic backing, night comes and the city transforms, while the vocals get more histrionic, you can't wait for the cover darkness brings.
City Where I Fall In Love while sitting in cafe's gazing at the passing faces, the laid back feel of the snare sounds like the beating of the feet on the pavement, will he find true love having learnt from previous dalliances, with all the pleading in the vocals its possible.
City Of Energy is elegiac response to the amount of energy it takes to transform a once industrial wasteland, into the latest wasteland of glass and steel skyscrapers, blankly servicing all the newcomers.
City Of Endless Time feels as if it should be about one of the global cities that are more than a thousand years old, rather than a new town like Long Island city, a pulsating backing is gently embracing all the connections you make in a city over time, through generations and regeneration.
City Of Dreams is a somnambulantly slow piano led epistolary for the hopes and dreams Joe and many others have for the future of the cities they live in. I hope he dreams of one where 20 MPH speed limits are no longer imposed, Speed humps are removed, in a city that works for the majority of its inhabitants.
City Of Patterns has ambient noises as backing for a stripped back vocal mourning what was lost in the pandemic.
The album closes with City Of Light something he is searching for to relieve all the pain of modern living, that can only be alleviated by believing that you really are in a city of light as the guitar fizzes and the strings go a little bit ambient weird.
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