Prozac + - Antidepressants, punk style

They drew inspiration from Californian punk-rock and played as support act for U2's concerts. They found success by combining punk's speed with pop melodies. And their lyrics, for better or worse, caused quite a stir

by Claudio Fabretti

They formed on the tough front line of the stage. And, after plenty of hard graft, they managed to break through, thanks to two successful albums like “Acidoacida” and “3 Prozac +”. Theirs is music that really comes alive in concert above all. Prozac + are, in fact, a band born to play live. That's also shown by their experience supporting U2 on two dates of the “Pop Mart Tour '97” and by the grueling run of over two hundred shows in two years. These are performances full of vigor, in which Eva (vocals), Gian Maria (guitar) and Elisabetta (bass) know how to hammer the audience with their songs, hyper-fast, hard and melodic at once: an updated punk recast in a pop key and seasoned with irony.

During their shows, the most worked-up fans keep up punk rituals: they spit and repeatedly try to storm the stage, they "pogo" and shout a bit of friendly abuse at the band. But Eva, the slight singer with the multicolored wigs, never lets up for a second: she jumps, dances and sings with enviable energy. Everything openly evokes the punk era, right down to police-car sirens in the style of the Clash's “Police on my back”.

In 1997 the album Acidoacida catapulted them into the Italian top ten, on the strength of a successful punk-and-pop cocktail, with lyrics that described - perhaps superficially, but certainly effectively - youthful unease. An easy record, but not a banal one, driven by the delightful “Acida”, poised between pounding rhythms and melody. Their first breakthrough, however, had been “Pastiglie”, an ironic track about life “popping pills”, which had earned them a certain notoriety on the Italian underground scene.

Their lyrics stirred up some resentment and controversy over their supposed “drug fetishism” (Prozac being the brand name of a well-known antidepressant). Indeed, a song like “Betty tossica” raises more than a suspicion of cheap “shock tactics”: “Ha 15 anni ma ne mostra 30/ vive nei parchi assieme ai gatti/ tutti si innamorano di Betty tossica/ un’eroinomane, la più bella che c’è”. But the band always defended themselves, claiming that their lyrics “do nothing more than show a secular, non-moralistic approach to youthful unease”.

The other accusation, meanwhile, is that of converting punk into easy melodies. “At the end of the day,” replies Gian Maria Accusani, guitarist and lyricist, “even the Californian punk songs that inspired us were tunes with '60s-style melodies, just played harder.” And it's hard to argue with these disciples of the Ramones, since their songs manage to draw blood with little more than a couple of well-placed chords and a catchy refrain.

The formula cooked up by these three punks from Pordenone is, in short, a hybrid one, satisfying Sex Pistols nostalgists while still winking at the charts. So much so that Acidoacida went on to sell over 160,000 copies.

But the risk that Accusani said he feared more than anything else - “repetitiveness” - duly showed up with 3 Prozac +, their second album, which slaps garbage and desolation on its cover. A record that revels in presenting everything that's squalid (the CD artwork shows, in detail: spoiled goods, discarded tires, illegal dumps), but which fails to be as immediate and communicative as Acidoacida. Many tracks spin their wheels, and it feels like you're hearing earlier songs again, tweaked with a different arrangement. The exploration of unease continues, with tracks like “Stonata” (“I only feel good/ when I hurt myself.”), “Ordine e disordine” (“Mi uso e abuso di me/ mi spingo sempre oltre il limite/ Ma il limite non so più dov’è, il limite non esiste”). And the references to a life outside the rules keep coming, as in “Pds” (which doesn't stand for the Partito Democratico della Sinistra, but for “lost-different-wasted”), in which Eva sings: “Sono così come sono, così mi piaccio/ Sono così diversa, diversa fuori e dentro/ Sono così, non cambio, nata così per scherzo”.

Too much not to raise the suspicion that the band from Pordenone is falling victim to some premature signs of mannerism and fatigue. In the meantime, “3 Prozac+” was also translated into English for the international market.

The follow-up album Miodio marks a new stage in the band's progress, with small evolutions in the arrangement of melodies and instrumentation, but always along the lines of their tried-and-tested formula of fizzy, slightly dazed pop-punk. The lyrics confirm an underlying irony (starting with the title itself, which can be read either as “Mi odio” ["I hate myself"] or “Mio Dio” ["My God"]), as well as the usual dissection of youthful existential malaise. The songs are, once again, enjoyable, if a little repetitive, delivered in a sing-song style by the unmistakable Eva and - on four tracks out of thirteen, including the single “La storia di Piera” - by the rougher-edged Gian Maria Accusani. Overall, the record gives the impression of a band struggling to set out on the path toward the kind of maturity that's essential for its future.