The reason is actually quite practical. In the sense that all our previous records were born at home, on the computer: designed to be played, but not the result of common work in the room. This one also had similar premises, but there was a lot more exchange between me and the band in the compositional phase. We got to the rehearsal room and reworked the arrangements so that everything sounded natural. When someone writes parts on the computer, alone at home, sometimes they aren't even aware of any forcing. The band is a great filter that allows you to select what you really need within a song.
So the Post Nebbia project now consists of a singer-songwriter who has his own band and a band who has its own singer-songwriter. Can we say it like this?
It is a project that has changed many forms over the years. And maybe it will change it again. We started when we were kids and we worked together. The next two albums, especially “Entropia Padrepio”, where Fight Pausa's contribution was fundamental, I made in solitude, also because it was the height of the Covid era. With the formation of this album, however, I had already played a lot live and we also developed a bond of friendship.
Did the fact that you took charge of the production, without Fight Pausa, have any impact?
I've been making music since I was 16. I needed to deal with a studio without anyone to lend me a hand. The approach I took takes a lot of the things Fight Pausa taught me into account. As a producer he has great sensitivity towards artists, the album he recently produced for Valerio Visconti, for example, is beautiful. “Pista Nera” is however mixed by him and from him I learned to compose and arrange keeping in mind a sort of mental image of what the album could be during the mixing phase.
The rhythmic fit between the lyrics and the drum parts is very interesting. It almost seems like you understand the words better if you link them to percussive accents. Have you done any research in this regard?
Now that you make me think about it, I'd say yes. By force of circumstances. First of all, for the drum sound, done live, and then because I worked a lot on the lyrics to make them “play”, even during rehearsals. Italian is not a language made for rock and instead we wanted this record to have a rock sound in the true sense of the word.
Focusing again on the lyrics, the setting referred to in the title seems very strong to me. I imagined a dystopian ski resort where everyone, starting from the initial child, “Leonardo”, gets lost. Except that instead of a “dark forest” there is Courmayeur.
Yes (laughs)ultimately that's what it's all about. The idea of the audio from the factory speakers on the first piece is Giulio's, the keyboard player. We had this instrumental track, but without a narrative characterization that linked it to the rest, and it seemed a bit wasted. So we said to ourselves “let's try to put something like children who get lost during family trips”, and we asked our manager, who is from a town in the Belluno area, to record audio from people who had a real mountain accent.
The child who gets lost is the expression of discomfort and gives the key to understanding the entire album. Can we think like this?
Yes, it's an image. I tried not to be didactic, not to explain too much. Music is a medium which must remain simple and direct.
Is the discomfort you are talking about generational?
In a certain sense yes. Mine is a generation that was born right before September 11th. We had a sort of taste of the 90s, tasted the tail end of that pinnacle of civilization, in which there seemed to be peace, political stability, well-being, etc., etc. When the first trouble started, I was still too young to understand. In 2008 you watched the news and the news had become grim, there were parents of my friends at school who lost their jobs, but I struggled to realize what was happening.
So it's as if problems and awareness have grown together?
And consequently also disgust. Which is the strong emotion that I tried to bring out in this album. Disgust at the fact that all the people of my generation have before their eyes the paradigm of how things should go, of what the future should be. Think of Fantozzi's films. He is portrayed as a loser, leading an alienating life. Yet he has a car, a home, a family, a stable job and will have a pension. That cosmic loser condition today appears to be a sort of mirage. Experience is slowly teaching us that if you expect to be able to live the life your parents had, to study, find a job immediately, retire at a decent age and build things, well, it's a a little difficult. In fact, it's not even difficult. It's practically impossible.
Is it a “Black Run”?
What meaning does music have in this sort of collective destiny?
It tears you away from the illusion, and even a little from the condemnation, of living from day to day. Therefore it is a disorientation which, if it does not have a happy ending, at least has a good purpose. At the beginning there are the questions. “Why do I have to work my ass off? Why study? Why work hard?” And in a moment in which you can't find answers in immediate everyday life, music is one of the things that can give you a look that goes beyond.
All your records are a bit gods concept albummeaning that the lyrics revolve around a theme. How did this type of writing arise?
There is always a piece from which I start. A song that clarifies my ideas about what I want to say and paves the way for everything else. In “Entropia Padrepio” it was “Cuore simple”, in “Canale landscapes” it was “Telesalendite di quadri”, here the turning point was “Pastafrolla”, which is a bit like the image of a collapsing nest, of a civilization falling apart.
You spoke before about Fantozzi; on the album instead there is a piece dedicated to “Kent Brockman”, which takes us back to the Simpsons. They are models of comedy that strike me for their tragic subtext and for their universality, which is somewhat the same as that which can be felt in the album. What do you think?
“The Simpsons” for me are an inexhaustible source of pearls, especially the first seasons, which have the merit of telling you complex things in a super-immediate way. Music works like that too. You have to be able to take something complex and compress it into an instant, make it a punch. Even for “Pastafrolla”, the song I was telling you about, which served as the inspiring nucleus of the album, I was inspired by a scene from the Simpsons in which the Springfield mafia, after winning a contract, builds a school with crackers instead of bricks, which obviously melt at the first rain. The brilliant thing is that while it gives you a problem like corruption, it manages to entertain you. It goes deep. It's not a memesit's a strong emotion, but it makes you laugh out loud.
While you were drying the sonic magma of the previous records, also harmonic research it got deeper. Indeed, here and there in the writing, I feel the influence of Brazil emerging. Can it fit?
I love Brazilian pop music, it has completely bewitched me since I discovered it. I started, very unromantically, by making a playlist on Spotify and gradually listening to everything the algorithm recommended. Spotify's algorithm is “evil”. But when something bad does you good, what can you say to him? I discovered Milton Nascimento, the Brazilian phase of Ornella Vanoni, Chico Buarque de Hollanda's album with Ennio Morricone.
But all in a rock album…
This is our first album that really deviates, in my opinion, from the whole trend indie from 2015 onwards, which however, I say without hesitation, has always been present in some percentage in our style. Given the subject matter and tone of the album, we went back to listening more darkmore intense. A concert by the Teatro degli Orrori comes to mind, which by the way are now returning. Obviously we are very different, but I saw them when I was 15. They were at a stage where they were letting go of everything, but they played in a way that took your guts out and stirred them before shoving them back in. These are examples to which I feel close on an emotional level.
In short, we started from the sound and by talking about sounds we end our chat. Do you think yours can also speak to a foreign audience? The tour includes a stop at the ESNS in Groningen, Holland…
The nice thing about that type of situations, which we have already experienced while playing at the Transmusicales in Rennes on the previous tour, is that they make you perform in front of a lot of people, because over the years the public has been educated to look at the flyers of the bands that they come out every year, to listen to them first, and then to go and see them. And you get an interest, an almost touching attention. It wouldn't be bad if a more systematic space was opened up on foreign circuits, even for projects sung in Italian.
