Suicide + Pan Sonic

A promising evening on January 22nd at Villaggio Globale. For the modest sum of €6 (bless these politically-priced tickets), the organizers offer up a double bill that would send any critic on the planet into raptures: first the heirs, then the legends. Pan Sonic first, followed by Suicide. Unsurprisingly, the crowd turns out in force, and the marquee hosting the event fills up pretty quickly. Just as quickly, a thick cloud of smoke will form in flagrant defiance of Sirchia's anti-smoking law, but that's another story.

We won't dwell too long on the Pan Sonic set: just three months after their last Rome show (the one at the Auditorium), their performance, unsurprisingly, hasn't changed. For more details, we'd point you towards our review of that gig. Here we'll just add that, compared to three months ago, the different venue makes for a different sound. If the Auditorium was the ideal setting for their music, the marquee at Spazio Boario gives us a less crisp, less defined sound, with more tellurian bass but somewhat robbed of its icy beauty. That doesn't change the fact that their forty-five minutes were nothing short of exceptional.

If anyone who'd never seen them before was left shell-shocked by Pan Sonic's set, in front of Suicide the bewilderment is collective. Even, or especially, for those who had already caught a date on their last Italian tour, just a couple of years back.

In practice, virtually every song follows the same pattern. Rev hits a button and a programmed (or pre-recorded) backing track kicks in, then, with his little keyboard permanently set to "drums", he starts pounding away almost at random on the keys, using nothing but his knuckles. Vega recites over the top as usual, eerily reminiscent of a more strung-out Maradona.

The result is that the first songs all sound alike and, rather than adding anything to what the duo has already said and done, they almost seem to disown it, sapping the strength from their obscure myth. Doubts among the crowd grow stronger by the minute: what is this stuff? What's happened to Suicide, protagonists of thoroughly professional performances on their last Italian visit and now so hopelessly adrift? A bit of the old spark returns with "Ghost Rider", but more thanks to the merits of the old classic than to Vega and Rev. If anything, the crowd never really shakes off its bewilderment: our attempt to start a pogo pit falls on deaf ears, finding no takers at all.

It's total collapse. "Cheree" is without doubt the most glaring example. One of the great classics from that legendary debut is first dedicated "to all the girls here tonight", as if it were some run-of-the-mill cover of "When a Man Loves a Woman" at a village fair. But the song itself leaves you even more stunned. Rev lays down a pure piano-bar backing track and Vega sings over it. It's so ugly, so senseless, so squalid that it borders on a stroke of genius. Ridiculous trash, but deeply tragic at heart. Definitely more Ciprì and Maresco than Alvaro Vitali.

Rock bottom is reached when Vega passes the microphone through the crowd. No one knows what to say, and people limit themselves to the odd shout. But it's not over yet: for five seconds, the worst singer of all time treats us to one of the most classic blasphemous outbursts. It's the lowest point a concert could possibly sink to.

And that's the resurrection.

Now everything becomes clear: Suicide bring onto the stage the very essence of rock'n'roll, the extreme edge of its philosophy. Tonight they can't do anything right. Rev can't play, Vega can't sing and doesn't know how to hold the stage. When he trips over a cable and, by some miracle, doesn't fall, he embodies all the nothingness that becomes everything and nothing at all, he puts on stage the Passion of every man who puts himself on display, the cross borne by every Christ of our times. The sentence of carrying one's own emptiness on stage, dressed in nothing but a mask.

And so, by staging the death of rock, Suicide simultaneously celebrate its rebirth. Knowingly? Unknowingly? It hardly matters. Rock draws its strength from its most intimate weakness, from the dramatic depths of its own existence.

There will be those who complain about this show, but that's exactly as it should be. These two could never grow old like any other rock star. They could never keep repeating themselves in professional, thoroughly dignified performances. They offended even the most jaded audiences back in the '70s, and they still offend today. It's just that they can't do it the same way every time. Who would take offense because there are no guitars (well, okay, maybe someone would) or because Vega insults the crowd, or simply because they're called Suicide? Nowadays, provoking an audience while remaining sincere can only happen by accident, as seems to have been the case tonight.

The concert closes with "Frankie Teardrop", which brings all four of them onto the stage, Suicide and Pan Sonic together. We witness a kind of symbolic passing of the torch between the New York duo and those who have always been singled out as their only possible heirs. From the rejection of mass-communication society to the mass acceptance of an antisocial incommunicability. In their heartfelt tribute to Vega and Rev's dark totem, culminating with Väisänen hurling his own pseudo-synthesizer to the ground, tonight Pan Sonic seem to be telling us something: "Hey, they were right all along. Tonight too."

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