Alcantara hail from the gorgeous island of Sicily and are part of the Oskar Records stable. They released the well-regarded Tamam Shud last year, which regrettably did not get a review on this website, but I thought I would make up for that with some words about their new live album, “Alcantara – In Concert”, which is available to purchase at https://bandalcantara.bandcamp.com/album/alcantara-in-concert

Tamum Shud is played in its entirety, alongside tracks from their 2019 debut, Solitaire.

The band lineup is Francesco Venti, lead guitars; Sergio Manfredi Sallicano, vocals; Vittorio Distefano, guitars; Salvo Di Mauro, guitars; Rosario Figura, drums; Danilo Montagnino, bass; and Alessandro Caltabiano on keys, and one thing that flies out at you is that this band can play.

I am approaching this review as someone unfamiliar with the band, but who has been given a ticket to see them live, and, as ever in such circumstances, make a judgement as to whether the studio stuff and the future trajectory is worthy of exploration, so a landscape of thoughts, a conclusion and written as I hear it.

Tamum Shud had six tracks, none of epic length, over some 44 minutes of music. Immediately, I am struck by how tight they are. Sallicano is an authorative and confident lead vocalist, and they have that ability as a collective to bring differing textures to the music, moving seamlessly from the harder edge to the delicately pastoral.

TerryG has me swaying and nodding as I stand here typing, always a decent sign, some powerful soundscapes created as the track moves to a dramatic conclusion. Great start.

The guitar work from Distefano & Di Mauro stands out. Yes, shades of Floyd (the start of Il Distacco is reminiscent of Meddle-era Floyd, for sure) and Riverside, but strong enough to be regarded in their own right, I believe, and certainly fans of the work of Wilson with Porcupine Tree will find much to admire here – indeed, Distant Star features that kind of moody build-up to an explosion of noise PT did so well.

Montagnino’s bass is moody, and he works very well with Figura, the latter displaying some nice jazz chops on his playing as well as thumping out the harder stuff.

I love the delicate voice and keys on the title track, a sort of slow dance with each other, the guitars making ghostly noises in the background, and this was the first evidence of good harmonising. There is an achingly gorgeous guitar solo on this, hairs on the back of the neck standing up job, and the vocal chanting against this provides for an expressive, emotional experience, the sparse piano rounding it off very nicely indeed. I have embedded this at the foot of the review.

Listening to the penultimate track of the album, Sail, I did reflect on just how hard it is to perform an entire studio album in the live arena, because, usually, some work better in the mixing room than in the concert hall - maintaining a consistent excellence in an album is pretty hard, but Alcantara have pulled this off wonderfully, and I am loving the twin guitar interplay on this track, the mellotron adding a lush texture, the voice then soaring on one of the sonic highlights of 2026.

The concluding part of Tamam Shud has that change of mood and emphasis I love so much, with more than a hint of this band taking Americana as their root influence, with some gorgeous synths before the band hint, indeed, mock us, at a rocking out to close, a fiddle leading us into the moody guitar solo, the intensity building before a pause, ghostly noises and dark notes, the band channelling some dark energy before the promised land of an expansive denouement reaches us.

The live performance of this has achieved its purpose – for me to go back and rediscover this impressive work.

The remainder, then, takes four tracks from the debut album. I am completely unfamiliar with this. You do notice a different feel to the music – Treefingers is a dark affair, with a very good guitar riff, but strangely understated until it bursts free from the constraints of the vocals, and from then on, we have a classy classic rock close. Logan has a strange kind of post-punk vibe to it, before the prog core credentials reassert themselves with masterfully complex guitar solos exploding out of the speakers.

Penultimate piece, After the Flood, kicks off with that vocal, melodic, fragility that I have always enjoyed in my music. Sallicano is a find for me this year. This track has shades of pastoral Genesis to it, and, by extension, classic RPI bands of old – the Floydian influence (this time, post-Waters) does then reassert itself with fine guitar bursts, but to describe this band as solely Floyd influenced strikes me as being simplistic – there is a deeper nuance to their music than that. I do find the seagull interlude strange, though, but this leads into a particularly lovely passage of music, the singer crying out with full Cave-esque vocals, the guitars crying out, and is very good indeed.

The band close with Seasons, an epic-length track. It is almost meandering in its first third, and in danger of losing my attention, in honesty, and I think this is a good example of a band’s initial output showing promise, as opposed to being the finished article. However, when the guitars are let loose moving into the final third, that promise is displayed for all to hear, the song then descending into some whimsical jamming to close.

This is a very good live album. The playing is never anything less than superb, and the conclusion to this listener is that Alcantara are a band I want to explore and see how they develop.