Black Tail - Springtime Will Come

Once Upon A Time…

Once upon a time there was Desert Motel, an outfit that got going in the provinces in 2006, a few kilometres south of Rome, the brainchild of Cristiano Pizzuti, a guitarist who writes and sings lyrics able to draw on the best of American alt-country tradition, grafted onto killer melodies that stick in your head, together with drummer Fabrizio Locicero, always ready to rhythmically back up his friend's every need, actively contributing to the writing of the songs.

The first recordings appear on the debut EP Out For The Weekend, seven tracks built on acoustic, hushed atmospheres close to the indie-folk of Jayhawks, with a pronounced alt-country streak that flows into a hybrid ideally uniting Wilco and Neil Young, yet able to shine with a light of its own. The more intimate passages (though electricity is always present) offer pleasing crossovers between Black Crowes and Kings Of Leon ("A Song For When You're Blue"), a Dylan filtered through the country tradition of the great prairies ("Resurrection"), and a closing "What About You" enriched by Silvia Zanellato's voice and Alessio Guzzon's trumpet.

Opening the show, after the brief intro, is the splendid "Paths", but Out For The Weekend above all hinges on the two heavyweight tracks "This Town" and "In Your Town Of Need": the first has the sound of the rockier side of Jeff Buckley, the second is an energetic electric gallop with clear Byrds-ian roots, suitably brought up to date.

During the recording sessions the first "intrusions" appear from guitarist Roberto Ventimiglia and bassist Massimo Gresia, who would soon become permanent members of the line-up.

Yarn

Meanwhile, the band sets up its own recording studio, becomes the driving force behind Tube, an association bringing together emerging young acts from their area, and even starts a small independent label, Sofa Recs, thus becoming the true musical reference point in their hometown. The following three years would lead to Yarn, an album that cements the shift towards a more layered, electric sound, with undisguised pop leanings that make the final result accessible even to less demanding ears. The range of influences expands enormously, embracing both nostalgia and experimentation without overturning the path travelled so far. The project's core remains Cristiano Pizzuti, singer, guitarist and author of almost all the material. His guitar interweaves with that of Roberto Ventimiglia, who at the end of the recording sessions would hand over to Simone Sciamanna, capable of building part of his own effects gear thanks to his engineering background. Looking at their pedalboards before a live set, you'd expect an overblown wall of sound, but instead the guitars chase each other clean and crystalline, while constantly searching for abrasive developments, unlocking solutions dear to Jeff Tweedy. The result is a sound that is at once derivative and original, shaped with great personality and taste across twelve tracks of consistently high quality. The rhythm section is in the safe hands of bassist Massimo Gresia and drummer Fabrizio Locicero.

Yarn contains near-perfect songs, such as "Valentine's Gone" and "Brugge, Belgium", not to mention the instrumental intro of "Paperstars", the first single taken from the album, which leans towards certain sounds derived from Sonic Youth, or the superb reworking of "Paths", already featured in a different version on the debut EP. But Yarn also contains the oblique, rounded indie-rock of "Flowers", the Britpop turns of "Something", the echoes of "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" found in "Kurtz", the exuberance of "Different", the softer, more intense "Misery Road" and "Bright Side", right up to the newest addition, the brief "Summer/Fall", miraculously pulled out of the hat just as the recording sessions were about to wrap up. The album closes with the acoustic textures of "Let It Shine", punctuated by strings arranged and conducted by Roberto Ventimiglia.

Desert Motel leave nothing to chance, taking care over every small detail, from the sophisticated arrangements to the artwork, right down to the album's promotional trailer, put together by splicing moments filmed during breaks in recording. Cristiano Pizzuti doesn't hide behind the shield of the English language, doesn't use it as a trick to mask weak lyrics: he believes so strongly in what he writes that he decided to include the Italian translation of all the album's lyrics inside the booklet.

For anyone who adores a certain brand of "americana" strongly oriented towards the electric alt-country of Wilco, in 2011 Desert Motel were the next big thing on the Italian scene. The album received excellent reviews across the national specialist press, the band won a contest for emerging acts promoted by OndaRock, and shortly afterwards embarked on their first real Italian tour, even sealing a deal for a series of dates in the UK. But just as a bright future seemed about to open up, and while the band announced they already had a healthy stash of new songs ready, the adventure came to an abrupt halt, within touching distance of the decisive leap.

New paths

Fabrizio Locicero continues his artistic journey as drummer for L'Orchestraccia and as a regular collaborator with many Italian artists, including Marco Conidi and Roberto Angelini; together with Massimo Gresia he also opens a live club in Aprilia, Spazio 47. Roberto Ventimiglia speeds up his studies at the Conservatory and devotes himself for a while to "loftier" musical pursuits. Cristiano Pizzuti never stops writing new material, and every so often, for work - in "normal" life he works in graphic design - finds himself travelling to the United States, where he loves walking through the woods around Boston, escaping the chaos and sneaking into every evening gig happening on the underground circuit. Then, late at night, back home, he sits down to compose.

During that period Cristiano feels drawn to pursuing a singer-songwriter path in near-total solitude: out of that idea comes the precious "To E.S.", written and performed to commemorate Elliott Smith on the tenth anniversary of his untimely death. The track is released online on October 21, 2013 and represents the first recording released under the new moniker Black Tail. Alongside Pizzuti we find Simone Sciamanna, forming the initial core of the new project. In Cristiano's mind is the idea of quickly putting together an intimate-sounding EP, but the encounter with the new rhythm section made up of Luca Cardone (bass) and Roberto Bonfanti (drums) brings back a strong desire to work within a proper band: the Black Tail project thus takes shape as a quartet.

Springtime Comes…

It would take until November 2015 to finally hear "Springtime", the title track of the first album released under the Black Tail name, a spell from which, in a matter of moments, as if by magic, materializes the finest synthesis ever achieved (at least on the Italian scene) of Sparklehorse and Wilco, a track that starts off impossibly tender and suddenly arches upward as if Glenn Kotche and Nels Cline were there to underpin all of Mark Linkous's anguish. There are some very delicate moments on this album ("Small Talks" and "Tree Tops", both featuring a lovely instrumental coda), originally conceived for voice and guitar alone (though "November" remains the only entirely acoustic track) and later arranged for full band.

Other moments come across as more directly electric ("Love Is A Bore"), with the odd gem that rises above the average ("The Day Before TV") and even a slight psych drift: on "How To Be Lost At Sea" the guitars turn more aggressive and the vocals shift register.

Completed in just three days, steering clear of any overproduction and focusing on a natural, spontaneous sound that draws as much on the experience of Jeff Tweedy as on that of the leading contemporary singer-songwriters, Springtime represents a dream in bloom, just like the red flower immortalized on the cover. Transition and change are the main themes running through the nine tracks, the product of careful, reflective and mature songwriting; musically, the album sits between Americana and lo-fi, with acoustic paths that readily morph into electric streams, and a deliberate alternation of calm and fury that gives the whole record great dynamic range.

Cristiano Pizzuti, having put his ideas in order and gathered a handful of trusted friends, Telecaster slung over his shoulder, managed with Springtime to compose a concise yet deeply felt and distinctive primer in alt-folk-rock.

"Our" Americana

At that point Black Tail were going through a phase of great creativity, which in 2017 flowed into One Day We Drove Out Of Town, an album that shows how it's possible to turn all the world's fragility into a strength, wrapping it in softly electric layers. By now Black Tail know perfectly well how to decode the grammar of modern Americana and shape it with great flair, starting again from scratch each time to achieve consistently significant results. But getting to One Day We Drove Out Of Town (a title that strongly evokes both the urge to flee found in the characters drawn by Springsteen and certain visions of the young Neil Young) was anything but easy. After all, it's usually from difficulties that the best records are born. A series of personal and work-related setbacks forced Cristiano to finish the recordings with only Roberto Bonfanti, which effectively made the album the result of work carried out almost entirely as a duo. Within the economy of the project, this unwanted necessity pushed the guitars and Roberto's drumming - never so descriptive - to the forefront. The contributions of Simone Sciamanna, Luca Cardone, Filippo Strang and Ettore Pistolesi then proved essential in making the sound full and varied.

The main goal was to broaden the range of influences, so much so that the second chapter of the Black Tail adventure - alongside the already-tested blend of Elliott Smith, Sparklehorse ("Spider/Galaxy" is pure Mark Linkous) and Jeff Tweedy - shows clear traces of Beatles on the Harrison side (for the pop brightness, just listen to the closing "Sycamore" to be convinced), Teenage Fanclub (for the indie restlessness), Pavement (for the lo-fi attitude and the never-predictable guitars, see "Text Walking Lane") and Grant Lee Buffalo (for the gaze cast over the great American prairies). Compared to the debut, much more light emerges, while the sad-songwriter introspection stays in the background.

The new gems have a rounded alt-rock gait and are titled "Downtown" and "Wild Creatures", though attention to the gentler themes is by no means neglected: among these, "A Fox" is the track to hold close, with almost maternal care.

The album has the stride of the great classics, and among these nine rides of gentle rock - delivered with grace even when the band decides to bare its claws - everyone will find their own favourite to cherish and put on loop, rocking peacefully on the porch, savouring the passage of time with a cigar, a glass of bourbon and Black Tail's songs slotted in somewhere between a "Sky Blue Sky" and a "Mighty Joe Moon".

While Simone Sciamanna and Luca Cardone settle permanently into the group, which can thus tackle the promotional tour at full strength, in early 2018 former Desert Motel member Roberto Ventimiglia releases his personal debut. Intimate, crepuscular, melancholic, always measured, Bees Make Love To Flowers represents another piece of this expanding family in bloom. A delightful first work created by blending the awareness gained from classical studies (Roberto has in the meantime graduated in Composition from the Conservatory) with an innate taste for experimentation.

To launch his solo venture, Ventimiglia chose to clothe the first six tracks he produced with nothing more than the sound of an acoustic guitar and a few piano notes: the final result places him not far at all from the best international names in the field, somewhere between the Springsteen of "Nebraska" and the early Elliott Smith. Just listen to "May" to discover Roberto's fragile yet at the same time rock-solid world, a songwriter who already shows great maturity.

A second work will follow in January 2020, even more varied, Raw, released on Gusville Records. From the lockdown interlude will instead come the five tracks gathered at the end of September on the EP Look At The Stars Tonite.

To keep dreaming with eyes wide open

Towards the end of 2018 Black Tail recorded two prestigious covers. Their revisiting of "Sunflower" by the Springfields enriches Some Sort Of Secret Sign, an Italian tribute to Sarah Records' output. "Just Like Christmas" by Low, meanwhile, ends up on the Christmas compilation released by Lady Sometimes Records, A Very Lady Xmas.

On Friday 13 March 2020, right in the middle of the total Covid-19 lockdown, You Can Dream It In Reverse was released, once again the fruit of collaboration between the two independent labels MiaCameretta and Lady Sometimes. It's Black Tail's most "difficult" record, released, as it happens, at the most difficult moment Italy had faced since the end of the Second World War. You Can Dream It In Reverse carries on the Black Tail saga keeping the same distinctive elements of the previous chapters, but pushing them to the nth degree, with English lyrics that are never predictable, free of any easy slogan, enriched by a sound born of the best Americana you can imagine, and songwriting that maintains solid ties to the work of Wilco, Elliott Smith and Sparklehorse. Introspection and melancholy find calm confirmation in tracks like "Sequoia" and "The Great Comet Of 1996", so dense with arpeggios, while "Late Summer" brings in vaguely surf-tinged guitars that evoke so much sixties nostalgia. "Not OK" has the job of upping the tempo a touch, highlighting the never-dormant "indie" spirit, a further ingredient in the Lazio band's stylistic mix. But the track to remember this time round is undoubtedly "China Blue", with its snapshots of city life, placed, not by chance, as the opener - a three-act piece condensed into just six minutes, complete with a final guitar charge that's very Nels Cline. Instrumental codas, after all, are a constant for nearly the entire length of the record, to the point of becoming another distinctive trait of the band. All the guitars are played by Cristiano, laid over the rhythmic foundation laid down as usual by Roberto Bonfanti (drums) and Luca Cardone (bass).

Together with the earlier "Springtime" and "One Day We Drove Out Of Town", the nine new tracks signed Black Tail form a triptych of rare beauty and sensitivity. A consistency of output that proves ever more astonishing for a band that prefers to whisper rather than raise its voice. Tucked away in their half-hidden niche, having left the cocoon behind, they're now trying to transform from chrysalis into butterfly and fly towards wider recognition. I don't know why, but when I read Jeff Tweedy's recent autobiography, "Let's Go (So We Can Get Back)", I kept thinking of Black Tail, and of just how different life can be depending on where you happen to be born. Tweedy grew up in the provinces, but it was still a province right in the middle of the United States of America, and that's no small thing, because there it's never truly impossible to achieve success, to become "somebody". Had they come from the American Midwest, Black Tail would today be a cult band of worldwide fame...

For Christmas 2020, Black Tail released a Christmas EP, Season's Greetings, conceived to bring together under one roof six covers, recorded over the span of seven years but all sharing the same common thread: the Christmas theme. A collection of precious tributes that began in 2013, when the band recorded a contribution for a compilation promoted by an Italian webzine, a song by Jason Schwartzman / Coconuts Records: "It's Christmas". Twelve months later Cristiano Pizzuti, in the dead of night, just guitar and voice, recorded his version of a Will Oldham song, "Christmastime In The Mountains", the gentlest track on this collection. By the first light of dawn it was already done. Another flash-forward, let's jump to 2017, this time Yoko Ono, childhood memories, dad's records, a tremolo guitar, and here comes "Listen The Snow Is Falling", floating, light as snow.

In 2018 the same treatment is given to a Low song, "Just Like Christmas", shared online in real time, with the surprise of seeing it reposted the following day on Twitter by Low themselves: breathtaking stuff. But taking on such monumental models holds no fear for Black Tail: not only do they have enough quality to rearrange other people's songs and make them "their own" (hear it to believe it), but in many cases they even manage to improve on the originals. And so we arrive at their two consecutive appearances on the Christmas compilations released by Lady Sometimes Records: Daniel Johnston's "Held The Hand" in 2019 (watch out for the furious ripple in the finale) and Elliott Smith's "Angel In The Snow" in 2020, the nightmare year, when the band simply wanted to spend time together, safely, playing their own songs and those of the artists they love most, searching for some glimmer of normality despite masks and social distancing. A not-insignificant detail: it's the first track released by Black Tail featuring new recruit Cristina Marcelli, who replaced Luca Cardone on bass.

February 2024 brings Wide Awake On Beds Of Golden Dreams, the result of a difficult post-pandemic period that led the Lazio band to decide against writing lyrics meant to reassure the listener: it wasn't the moment to put together a carefree indie-rock album, ignoring circumstances and feelings. Black Tail chose instead to seek empathy and a shared sense of unease, striving to keep alive the fragile world they love to carve out with such craftsmanship. Verses veiled in sadness are grafted onto songs brighter than usual, particularly the two released in advance, "Josephine" and the title track, not by chance placed at the start of each side on the vinyl edition of the album: the logic is to move gradually toward darker material, "Haze" for Side A, "Candle" for Side B. It's a record of conflicting feelings, where even in the most intimate, solemn moments, sunnier turns flip the mood around. On "Silver Feathers" the melancholy stamped into the verse is broken by a more radiant chorus, followed by a sweeping guitar workout and a coda that shifts direction yet again. Something similar happens during the anything-but-linear unfolding of "Blissful Summer / Neon Heartbreak". These are songs with shifting structures, prone to rippling or even catching fire outright, making room for vibrant solos drawing inspiration from the Wilco aesthetic.

Sparklehorse and Elliott Smith remain the other touchstones that have always lit up Black Tail's path, artists capable over time of legitimizing their own quirks by shaping a distinguishable sound and a songwriting style unique of its kind in Italy. Melodies and guitars seek change, signal something new, letting traits emerge that stayed beneath the surface in previous work. The stylistic range feels broadened through British touches placed alongside the band's usual American-midwest imagery. Within the folds of "To Be Allowerd To Be" you can sense echoes of the Beatles, while elsewhere the jangle sound has the flavor of American bands shaped by the British scene. These are details in support of a narrative that refuses to stay numb in the face of what's happening around us: "Candle" speaks of darkness throughout its run, yet ends by affirming that even without a candle to light up the night, you can always stop and wait for dawn, because the light will always come in the end. Black Tail close out their tetralogy by probing the depths of the human soul, aiming to raise questions, because questions are windows that each of us can choose to throw open...

Although the Italian independent scene is widely seen as running out of steam, releases keep emerging for which the domestic market genuinely feels too small. Thanks to their compositional skill, technical ability and internationally minded approach, Black Tail is a project that deserves a stage far beyond our country's narrow borders. Very few artists in Italy today manage to bring anything-but-obvious influences into the present: being able to play (and write) like Wilco, Elliott Smith or Mark Linkous is an opportunity reserved for a precious few, touched by an uncommon expressive talent.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google