Subsonica are Fearless Hearts because they are not afraid of the future (or even of the end)

Article by Marzia Picciano | Photo by Rossella Apples

When in January 2024 Samuel, Boosta, Max Collini, Ninja And Neighbor they showed up at Santeria Toscana to tell us that they hadn't closed their doors, in fact they were there with an album that spoke of us and had a hint of them in an almost annoyingly nostalgic way (as if to say, after all this time are you still you? Damn!), starting from the purely Subsonica-type title, Augmented Realityand a baggage of collective art around in all respects faithful to their line (cit.) that is, TV boxes tuned to the empty melange and tinkering that hypothesize the sounds of our movements, here in that exact moment my mind wavered and asked itself: but was it worth it? A question that goes beyond the value of the work done in the effort of putting a band back together and playing together again. Yesterday September 7thto the Magnoliato the Grand Finale of the tour Subsonic 2024 (here if you want to relive the Collegno date with Stefania Clerici, here the Bologna one with Philip Grasselli and here in Milan with Simona Ventrella) for the evening Fearless Hearts (a name that at this point is very appropriate for the meaning of the show) with the YOU LOVE MEI can answer myself that yes, it was worth it, for reasons that are perhaps not immediate, but no less relevant.

The returns of bands so heartfelt to us, millennial children of analog wanna-desperately-be-digital and the global uncertainty after the fall of the Berlin Wall (but let's remain humble, eh) are always more relevant than the reason why they return. They are forgiven everything, or they are minimized everything (the Oasis have just given living proof of it in a global format), even the spirit of innovation and the claim to have something to say, even where there really is something to say, years and years later. But we are in a time of great returns. The Rolling Stones. I CCCP. I Garbage. This year practically all the bands from my youth celebrated their twentieth anniversary.

After all, today every new album, EP, single, project or release by various artists and bands is greeted with a level of media excitement and fanzinesque only comparable to that of a dog to whom the owner holds out a bone from behind his back: we are there, unable to occupy our minds for an infinite present of enjoyable bites and grunts until something else comes to attract our attention. The effect of the long tail, applied to the attention span of our brain, is the end of our perception of aging. Here's the catch: my only thought, in FOMO of having to grab a seat to see all the saints of my personal musical Pantheon, it's always the same: damn, am I getting old too, already? With all due respect to the real old people. But you and I, in 2000, weren't supposed to live forever as the Gallagher?

THE Subsonic they do not escape this bitter feeling, indeed they hit it right through their nature, genesis, cultural context that they bring with them, lyrics, a utopian approach towards the dystopias of the real present, those that are not even too well hidden behind big words that Samuel and his associates never put in the background in their production. If Subsonica were among the first bands – if not the first – to introduce in Italy and indeed in a context of musical pop-olate the sounds industrial and electronic music that were already firmly established in the musical cultures of other countries (bringing them with their main public success to Sanremo in that golden year, 2000, precisely All My Mistakes that even yesterday Samuel didn't even have to struggle to sing, since the audience took care of it), they were also the first to market in the mainstream verse-lists that are not houses, books, cars etc. but “Bionic eyes, more adrenaline/Sensors and neural cybernetics“. If yesterday it seemed futuristic, today it is everyday life. As is the Augmented Reality. With one big difference: today we live in a world that has lost at all levels the natural human enthusiasm for every layer of innovation, on the contrary it is preparing to cool with a Luddite gaze every now acquired right to comfort so longed for in the tech weeklies of our youth. How times are changing. Thank goodness no, Subsonica don't do it.

First of all because they have never been Pharisaic positivists, but have analyzed the sounds and implications of progress, understood both as development but also as struggle, with attention. They have always taken significant political positions in a recent but no less turbulent historical period (certainly if in 2000 you are under The Sky Over Turin, 200 thousand fewer inhabitants than in the 80s and the main Italian automotive hub in crisis) while they made us dance to the music that was already an established reality in the UK (the electronic revolution of Chemical Brothers) combined with the sound jungle And reggae that Casacci brought with him from Africa United. Significant in this sense is the setlist with which they concluded the tour, the same as the last dates, with Hail, North Jungle, Free for All which draw heavily on an Italianness underground increasingly sparse fighter (not by chance the tour includes a cover of Far From Your Sun Of Neffasung with the two guest stars Willie Peyote And You are). But their entire new augmented reality is, in truth, a political song. From the sentences (“if only that were enough“) on the stop bombing of Palestine and Ukraine, on the deaths in the seas of No Fault.

And it is no coincidence that they were accompanied in the evening by openings that align with their fighting spirit. How can you not feel the Atari origins of Boosta in the Valtellina area Cloud Face and the scratch of our Turin heroes in the rock one woman show of Tuscany Emma Nolde? That I see for the first time and it leaves me impressed. Rarely do talents do it in such a raw state.

And of course the great classics were missing: after the first three pieces of the new album (Human Dogsthe remarkable Morning of Light And Fist of Sand) the blow to the heart came with the hat-trick Discolabyrinth (the most famous rock riff in the Italian musical history of Turin, it is said) – Rapid Clouds (aaah the mornings with MTV) – The Center of the Flame. Aurora dreams began to warm up the crowd, a thread agée (we were saying, before), of true fans, who had more difficulty recognizing themselves in the new songs, confirming what is the sign of a victory (having become a band that has been able to “age” like wines do in people's coronary cellars) but also a condemnation (where are the young people? There's Peyote! Not even for Tiga are they coming? Or do they show up directly at 2?). However, I also felt the lack of Habit And The Glaciation. I will survive.

Also because Samuel And Max they told us clearly, many pieces are missing, but they (and they are a little excited) are coming back. And I don't doubt they are joking when they say they need us (us, children of the kids from the Berlin Zoo), I understand if Samuel says they have never wanted to make music together like today. After 30 years, breakups, ten albums, I don't know how many arenas in a summer and The Bubble Touryou have to have the desire. But above all you have to have understood that looking at the end with terror does not lead to much. In the end you have to sink to know how to manage it. And obviously you need fearless hearts.

Click here to see photos of Subsonica in concert in Milan or browse the gallery below

SUBSONICA: the concert lineup at Magnolia

Human Dogs

Morning of light

Fist of sand

Africa on Mars

Poison

Aurora dreams

Free for all

Discolabyrinth

Fast clouds

The center of the flame

North Jungle

Hail

Universe

The sky over Turin (with Ensi)

The Bubble Bursts (with Ensi and Willie Peyote)

Number One (Ensi cover)

Waiting for the Sun (Neffa cover) with Ensi and Willie Peyote

Porcupine

No fault

The flood

Lazarus

The smell

All my mistakes

Roads

Needles in the Camel's Eye (Brian Eno)

20th Century Box (STOOF Remix) (T. Rex Song)