Litfiba - Florence Wave

The Prehistoric Years (1980-84)

In London, punk is picking up its own pieces, doing so through the sectarian philosophizing of goth, electronic music, and new wave (in America there'll be no mere picking up or surviving: there'll be the speculation/revolution of hardcore, and eventually heavy metal). Back from his fashionable stint in London, a twenty-seven-year-old Led Zeppelin-esque guitarist with his hair styled punk-fashion (as he would later put it: "In 1979 I was the only punk in Florence"), born in Avellino, Federico Renzulli, begins his ragged life as an old-school rocker in Florence, without even the discouragement/hope that could come from what was then the sole capital (alongside New York) of world rock. "In Florence there was only death," Renzulli would repeat in interviews, referring to the absence of musical stimuli, venues, hangouts, new wavers. But thanks to that very death and the suffocation it caused, to an impotent nihilism that was an end in itself, that same year saw the formation, also in Florence, of a band of extraordinary poetic stature, lacking (like Litfiba would later) a sound of their own (they borrowed that of Joy Division) but with lyrics (in Italian, when singing in English was all the rage) rich in powerful imagery, elegant, evocative and - rare for the time - worth actually reading. That band was Diaframma, led by Federico Fiumani.

In this climate, word went around Florence that a certain Federico was looking for a bassist: a young man born in 1960 from the province of Grosseto, Gianni Maroccolo, answered the ad thinking he'd be meeting Federico Fiumani, who had already gained some popularity in Florence's university/youth circles: instead he found himself face to face with an unknown Federico Renzulli. "Località Italy Firenze via dei Bardi": that's where Litfiba were born: Federico Renzulli on guitar, Gianni Maroccolo on bass, Antonio Aiazzi (Florence, 1958) on keyboards, Francesco Calamai on drums. Their first track, an instrumental: "A Satana". Instrumental because they lacked a singer; Aiazzi took care of that, plucking a Florentine born in '62, Pietro Pelù, out of high school. He showed up in the basement on via de' Bardi, Renzulli's rented place owned by a count, and began - as he would later say, once he'd long since lost that original spark - to "scream into a microphone".

At the same time, Florence was starting to teem with alternative clubs (meaning new wave and/or post-punk venues): Manila, Faro, Casablanca, Rockoteca Brighton.

Litfiba's concerts – often shared on the bill with Diaframma, who had already released demos and EPs, and with other groups since vanished, like Neon – were marked (a perfect example being the "Mephisto Festa" during the 1982 carnival) by an opening straight out of a horror party: Maroccolo's dark, obsessive bass, a coffin at centre stage out of which Pelù emerged declaiming the opening lines of "A Satana": “Sangue scuro che avanza/ dalla parte scura il fronte dei/ cadaveri divora ogni cosa”, the ritual sacrifice of some random object smashed by Pelù, who would finally hurl himself from the stage into the crowd (unremarkable stuff elsewhere, but not in Italy — in Italy it could still thrill people).

In July 1982 Litfiba won the second edition of Bologna's Italian Festival Rock. The EP Guerra (Maso/Urgent Label) came out: "Guerra", "Luna", "Under The Moon", "Man In Suicide", "E.F.S.": every track is of a high standard (more in poetic than strictly musical terms), all evocative and laden with meaning, some sung in English, others in Italian. That covers the content; and it's really the only thing one can ask or expect of Litfiba, because the form — well, the form is simply whatever was in the air at the time, the average taste of an early-'80s teenager: dark/post-punk. But it's just a pretext; it could have been heavy metal, rap, soul: what matters is that Litfiba had something to say, and there was no better way to say it than in the language of their contemporaries. The metre is that of David Bowie, Killing Joke, Tuxedomoon, Martha & The Muffins, Ruts, Stranglers, Christian Death, X. What they had to say was the shroud of death, a sense of tragedy, the warning of a beauty as latent as it was absolute, the craving for some kind of extreme — be it sex, séances, nocturnal wanderings through rural cemeteries or drugs — and the terror of mediocrity. The cover, in black and white: a sort of nun-larva collapsing in on herself, for whom even the faintest light is unbearable. Meanwhile Renzo Franchi took over on drums, and the single "Luna/La preda" (Fonit Cetra, 1983) was released.

Still in '83, Litfiba appeared with "Transea" (the first hint of what would become one of Pelù's fixations: Eastern European gypsies) on the compilation Body Section (Electric Eye), and recorded the soundtrack to Eneide (Suono Records, LP), a theatrical production by Krypton. The band wandered through the slums of European cities, above all in France: that, fundamentally, was the sole wellspring of their poetics and their existence, even before being an artistic or musical need.

1984 (the year Siberia by Diaframma came out) marks the turning point. In Florence, Alberto Pirelli and Anne Marie Parrocell founded IRA, or "Immortal Rock Alliance". The label, which released the Diaframma album, quickly became Italy's best-known independent imprint. On drums now was Pelù's best friend and former schoolmate: Luca De Benedictis, known as Ringo De Palma (Turin, 1963): the two began using hard drugs. The EP Yassassin (Contempo, 1984) came out: "Yassassin", "Elettrica danza", "Yassassin (radio version)". Even in the covers, the influence of Bowie is obvious. "Elettrica danza", which also got a video set amid the nocturnal lights and shadows of a decaying, autumnal Parisian building, is a bohemian love song, cast in the same hues as early Black Sabbath ("Black Sabbath", 1970): Pelù's voice is that of a ghost on the verge of stabbing, or being stabbed by, some feminine entity: ghost/stabbed: smoky spirit/blood.

In IRA's first compilation, Catalogue Issue (1984), two more Litfiba classics appeared: "Onda araba" and "Versante est". The language of new wave is used to conjure and relive — through Tuscan eyes — oriental atmospheres.

The Power Trilogy (1985-89)

Now comes the great absurdity. In 1985 Litfiba released their debut album, Desaparecido (IRA). Absurd, first of all, because it's the most historically significant thing done in the most a-historical way. The a-history: musically, that album was, in '85, not only dated (it would already have been dated within the new wave movement back in '79), it was downright non-existent. And today: today, it's a joke. Tragicomedy. The sort of thing you'd expect from prehistoric grandparents, maybe just back from the front and a little addled: like long johns for bed, or your old aunt's curlers. Given how much tastes — and with them sounds — have shifted, nothing is further from average '90s rock than average '80s rock. And yet, precisely because of this, nothing is more deeply embedded in history than this album. It was born and it ended within that single year, 1985: it had nothing to say to its contemporaries, because it used a language already established and already dated, and therefore not contemporary (the musical ABC that Litfiba would always use, and which keeps them from being true musicians); nor will it have anything to say to those who come after, for the same reasons, if anything amplified. Which is exactly why it manages to say everything it set out to say, and that was no small thing: it was the tale of a teenage dream set in a Florence suspended between visions of country farmhouses and the templar spirits of mysterious lands.

There's only one reason to listen to a Litfiba album: the desire to daydream and let yourself be moved by thoughts of how you did, or might have, spent a very particular, sealed-off and unrepeatable stretch of time — this time it's '85. And in this "time", the first thing to guide us is an anthem, an anthem that in another form (the one it takes on live, for instance in Sogno ribelle, 1991) could have been an anthem in the vein of Overkill, "Anarchy in the U.K.", "Smells like teen spirit": it's "Eroe (o Eroi) nel vento". Pelù's voice, evocative and unique as (almost) always, is on this recording of the song still restrained, held back, congested, subdued. But the lyrics alone are enough — one of the few in the history of Italian rock that deserve a close reading: “Scatti ai nervi e i sensi che/ Le ombre dei sogni scuotono/ Spazza vento e porta via/ Il bambino che gioca con il mare/ Non sarò eroe / Non sarei stato mai/ Tradire e fuggire/ è il ricordo che resterà/ Eroi nel vento / è la noia che scava dentro me/ Solo noia che scava dentro me/ Guerre di eroi/ Tradite senza pietà/ e svanite nei secoli”.

The second night of this stretch of graveyard wanderings is represented by "La preda": mist, frost, running, breathlessness, death by ice while the heart, by a final cruel twist, implodes from beating too hard, from too much heat. "Lulù e Marlene": a love too big — it would take, besides the subject herself, at least two people to hold it up, but it would be pointless, they couldn't manage it anyway... and yet they are so beautiful... so it's best that neither one touches it. "Instanbul": from a hill in Florence, the imaginative trial of an Orient that, however much it simmers with disappointment, through sheer stubborn will can shine, as it once did or perhaps never did at all. "Tziganata": “Eva ballava sul fuoco/ Profumo di sesso attorno a sé/ La notte in cui nacque l’odio”: is that not enough? "Guerra" (with echoes of Simple Minds) is an extremely violent track that keeps building and building, giving neither breath nor respite, as if it will never end.

Also in 1985, Litfiba recorded for IRA a cover of "Amsterdam", written by Diaframma, because "the day was growing wild with light", as Fiumani's lyric puts it. Not only because the two most important bands of the scene performed it, but also for its sheer poetry, this is the single most important track of the Italian Eighties.

In 1986, IRA released the EP Transea, still on the "eastern front": "Transea", "Maria Valevska", "Onda araba", "C.P.T. Queeg". Amid various touring adventures across Europe, Litfiba landed in Moscow. Pelù, leaving De Palma to his fate, quits drugs and enters a period of alcohol dependency. Artistic and personal friction grows between the band's two roosters, Maroccolo and Renzulli: the former leans toward Tuxedomoon, dark tones built around the prominence of bass and electric keyboards over other instruments; the latter toward Led Zeppelin, guitar solos. Aiazzi, who has no personality of his own, sides now with one, now with the other.

This time Maroccolo won out, working day and night on the arrangements: the result is 17 Re (IRA, 1986). The double LP, even more anachronistically rooted in new wave than before, is a wildly different record from the first. It pushes to extremes, as if violating a corpse, what's left (that is, what Litfiba still remember) of new wave's dictates: you can already smell the Nineties coming (in the United States, the first Pixies EP has just come out, and Mudhoney's is about to follow): Litfiba instead embark on a blind, suicidal Odyssey backwards. They risk being buried alive by it. It's the band's most extreme, difficult, sincere and anarchic album (anarchic in the sense that every member played, sang and said whatever they pleased). It will also be their least-selling.

All the tracks are sick in the same way, pervaded by one same, ineluctable murkiness; they emerge from the depths (whether of a diesel tank, a mouldy cellar or a skeleton, it hardly matters). There's no breathing room here, not even from a gallows balcony, as there was on Desaparecido. The music is written by Renzulli, Maroccolo and Aiazzi. As for the lyrics — which, though without the peaks of Desaparecido, still demand to be heard — nobody really knows who wrote them. Piero Pelù has always claimed sole credit, but judging by his later work it seems unlikely he deserved it; perhaps they were all written together; perhaps by Renzulli alone.

"Resta" is a decisive, uncompromising track: for its brevity, force and conciseness, it would have been out of place on the album devoted to the Argentine desaparecidos. "Re del silenzio", another standout, explains why the opening track said "What remains is the part of me closest to nothing": because "I no longer know how to love". "Café, Mexcal e Rosita" stretches every port of call (death, betrayal, work, war) into one drunken, alcoholic, senseless and desperate sea. Anti-aesthetic, because aesthetics, like everything else, no longer matter: there are no more eyes left to see, no ears left for anything else. Only a dirge, wretched and bestial. Without any self-indulgence. "Vendette" attempts a reconstruction, if only a utopian one, of some landing place of worth: as if to say, if there is a god (strictly lower-case), he'll provide. The acoustic opening is remarkable: in seven years of the band's career, no use of acoustic guitar has been documented before. "Pierrot e la luna": after walking the girl home, in the evening, stomach empty because dinner hasn't been had yet even though it's late, the edge, the edge between the dirt road and the field, to be skirted, to be grazed along the cold wet blades of grass, to vanish into. Towards the moon.

"Tango": a track built on a tango rhythm, indeed, but violent, tense and wrapping, like gypsies dancing in a circle around a fire, a fire of initiation, to life or to death. "Come un dio": it would become a manifesto, first with 12/5/87 and later with Pirata. "Febbre": see "Cafè, Mexcal e Rosita", except that here we're not alone on a pub bench, but alone in the dark room of a house that is nothing but that room. As if we were there waiting for a steam iron to suffocate us in vapor. "Apapaia", with more pop tones, probably the only track written by Pelù. "Univers": an otherworldly atmosphere, and while it's not the best track on the record, it's the one that best clarifies the differences with Desaparecido: we've gone from the first record, about living in order to later die, to this one, which is no longer a story about something else, but is itself, already, a story about death. Whatever anyone says, by now life no longer holds any interest - it's already been squeezed dry.

What remains, if anything remains, if 17 Re remains, is a withered thing (body, fruit, cloth). "Sulla terra" is perhaps the best track on the album: we're in Jerusalem, the last of the infidels abandons the city, and to do so he needs to sacrifice a friend, and he doesn't care, because he doesn't care about the escape itself: he does it because it happens to him.

"Ballata" is the morning after the night of the escape. Total solitude. Nothing. Not even the strength to kill oneself. The album closes (always true to the dark red tone that characterizes it, even on the cover) with four tracks in very rapid succession, each more violent than the last: Pelù finally screams and growls. "Gira nel mio cerchio" and "Cane", reworked in a thoroughly garage-rock and decidedly non-new-wave key, will become two of the band's classics. "Oro nero" is a witches' sabbath. Wounded means dead.

The extremely long '87 tour, which squanders the band's meager earnings by reaching as far as Australia, closes with a historic night, in a venue that would itself become historic because of it. Nothing happens on 12-5-'87, no one dies: it's simply open ground for dreaming and emotional intensity. The setting is a packed Tenax in Florence.

The resulting live album (12-5-'87, IRA, 1987) is made up of a scant number (10) of the songs performed that night: in choosing which tracks to release, those from 17 Re are favored, along with only "La preda" and "Tziganata" from the first album; "Eroi nel vento" is missing. But if 17 Re is Litfiba's most worthy studio album, this is their best album, full stop. Best, though, in a very strange way; it arises from this contrast: in the studio Litfiba play new wave, live they play garage-rock; Litfiba's studio albums sell poorly (17 Re, an album constantly disowned by the Pelù-Renzulli duo, sold very little), yet their shows are always sold out, even abroad.

On 12-5-'87, De Palma's drumming is, as ever, that of someone whose sole purpose in life is to play, without ever showing off or overemphasizing even that: and he doesn't miss a beat; Maroccolo's bass is a rightful absolute ruler; Renzulli's guitar is tasteful, never intrusive or self-celebratory, as essential as it is effective; Pelù alternates sudden irony in his addresses to the crowd (he would even be reported for insulting a former Italian government minister) with total detachment from anything that isn't the words he's intensely singing. "Come un dio" and "Cane" show just how nimbly a Litfiba song can transform. The versions of "La preda" and "Tziganata" are transcendent. The extended call-and-response with the crowd on "Luna", a track dating back to '82, provides the thrilling conclusion to both the concert and the recording.

With Litfiba 3 (IRA 1988), the band - within which Pelù and especially Renzulli are taking on an ever-greater role - abandons new wave. The album draws on the Stooges and Van Halen. If this were America, you'd call it Detroit-rock; however, both because we're not in that country and because of the resurfacing of old ghosts of melodies and adolescent motifs ("Istanbul" in "Santiago", "Febbre" in "Peste"), it's more fitting to speak of world music. With new wave's two waves now over (the late-Seventies/early-Eighties one of Joy Division and the mid-Eighties pop one of the Smiths), with hard rock selling big (Guns N' Roses) and metal taking over (Metallica), Litfiba clean up, simplify and power up their sound, in a direction not unlike the one they'd already adopted live (e.g. the 12-5-'87 versions of "Cane" and "Resta").

Litfiba (Renzulli and Pelù) are so loosely tied to any aesthetic sense of music that within a single year they can quite easily jump from one genre to another, depending on whatever the Italian trend of the moment happens to be; when these shifts are backed by substantial ideas or atmospheres, a Litfiba record is worth listening to and letting yourself be carried away by; otherwise, the bin is the only solution.

Litfiba 3, despite the mediocre "Amigo" (garage-rock for its own sake), "Louisiana" (utterly boring), "Corri" (more filler, if powerful filler) and "Bambino" (a dreadful retraction of the themes of "Eroi nel vento"), is an album that's worth hearing. "Cuore di vetro" (reworked from "Because I Do" by X) is the only Italian grunge song, not just keeping pace with its time (that of "Touch Me I'm Sick" by the Mudhoney) but actually ahead of it; "Tex", which in another version (through that same process of re-dressing tracks: see "Cane" again) will become Litfiba's first hit, is a great piece of world music/hard rock. "Ci sei solo tu" is a workout for Pelù's booming voice and the pogo it incites; "Paname" is a fairly refined cocktail-lounge game, sung in Franco-Italian.

Litfiba declare - to satisfy Pelù's rhetorical and blasphemous disciples - that 3 is the final act of the "trilogy of power" (their first three albums supposedly held up by opposition to totalitarian regimes). For the band, though, it really is the end: Maroccolo leaves (he'll go on to form CSI), De Palma dies of an LSD overdose: left standing are Pelù and Renzulli (the winner of the power struggle) along with Aiazzi. The two could have called it quits or changed their name; instead (since Renzulli owned the rights) they carry on, sign with Cgd, hire an unremarkable bassist (exactly what Renzulli wanted), Roberto Terzani, a decent drummer (Daniele Trambusti) and, for a touch of eccentricity (and professionalism, since live he'll handle much of the heavy lifting), a Black percussionist, Candelo Cabezas.

In reworking old songs in the new grunge/hard rock key, Renzulli gets to indulge his own musical tastes: Led Zeppelin, Santana, Van Halen. The new lineup sets off on tour, paving the way to popularity and lucrative earnings. A fake live album comes out (heavily touched up in the studio): Pirata (CGD, 1989). It's hard rock with no compromises toward new wave or pop, only toward traditional Mediterranean-Latin music: the old fans have vanished, replaced by new teenagers with no idea what punk or new wave even are, but eager to live their lives under the banner of a rebellion that's not self-destructive but rather guarantees fun and emotion. "Cangaiceiro" is a new, driving track, the album's manifesto, for which Renzulli handled the music and Pelù the lyrics; "Il vento" is a piece of PSA-ad trash; the new version of "Come un Dio", renamed "Dio", has nothing to do with the earlier one, but it's magnificent, as is "Tex" (the album's hit and Litfiba's first), the right song for capturing youth with all its hopes and small/big tremors. Even the covers of "Rawhide" and "Cannong Song" strike for their intensity, as does - above all - the anthem "Tequila". "Gira nel mio cerchio" turns almost death-metal; "Lulù e Marlene" is simplified, gaining in immediacy but losing some of its charm.

The Tetralogy of the Elements (1990-99)

Perhaps unexpectedly, Litfiba carry on and even intensify the hard rock phase of their story. They produce a masterpiece, "El diablo", a generational anthem on par with "Eroi nel vento": no more refinement, no more introspection; just force and power. The scream/growl that opens the track/manifesto belongs in the history books, the lyrics meaningful and simple enough to become a creed. It's the opening track of the album of the same name (El Diablo, CGD, 1990), which continues with a kind of Latin trip-hop set to a Stooges-style bass-drum pulse: it's another manifesto, albeit a lesser one, "Proibito". For the rest (and in that "rest" lies the full weight of Maroccolo's absence, which the two schismatics pretend not to feel), the album - which will sell a solid half a million copies - is best tossed aside.

Sogno ribelle (CGD, 1992) follows the same template as Pirata: a mix of live tracks, unreleased songs, and reworkings of old ones. Still, aside from the usual "Bambino" and "Apapaia", it's a collection that manages not to bore, standing out for a Led-Zeppelin-esque version of "Eroi nel vento" which, from its title alone, aims to satisfy the cathartic, dreamy cravings of the new teenagers but also of the average twenty-five-year-old small-town worker, who'll use it as a soundtrack and a spur for his Saturday nights of freedom.

Terremoto (CGD, 1993) was announced by the band as a latin/metal album. It's the best studio album by the Renzulli/Pelù duo. Riding the grunge wave, the two have no intention of being left behind. That their way of keeping up with the times means arriving light years after everyone else only confirms the same fact: Litfiba (when they pull off their mission) are shamans and conjurers of attitudes, traits, moods, visions, which every listener should then use not so much to fit their own reality, but rather to try to reconstruct that story (the lives of Pelù and Renzulli) which its own protagonists never actually tell us. Music as artistic expression has no place in this dimension: it's a backdrop, but also necessary ground to stand on. That's why Litfiba make albums. And that's why it is, more than difficult, pointless to cite their references or look for their influences. As far as Litfiba's sound goes, everyone else might as well not exist: if no other band had ever played, and there had only been some fellow who'd simply written 7 new wave notes, 7 hard rock notes, 7 grunge notes on a musical staff, it would have been exactly the same for Litfiba. Their albums would have turned out exactly the same in every respect. Litfiba stand so far outside the rest of the scene that dialogue, comparison, or any relationship with any other artist becomes impossible. An end in itself: here is a term that's simply inadequate to describe any single act in the Litfiba saga.

Coming to Terremoto, we're still met with that studio/live divide: and this holds true for every track. Songs that are nonetheless particularly inviting and promising for this very reason, that usual, vivid, extremist surge of power. The only flaw is “Soldi”, the Louisiana of the bunch. The rest is a concentrate of transfiguration between sun, asphalt, scorched countryside and nights that restore coolness. It's the summer hour of early afternoon, after lunch: a hammock, a tequila, countryside to melt into.

The triple live album Tailspin (EMI, 1994) makes all of this a reality. It's the best Litfiba album since 1987. It's summed up by the unreleased opening track “A denti stretti”, which contains all of Pelù's best qualities: personality, the absence of tedious social themes, candour. The album, not coincidentally, contains the whole of Terremoto: that implosion needed to be made to explode. “Sotto il vulcano”, “Dinosauro”, “Il mistero di Giulia”, “Fata Morgana” (outstanding), “Maudit” (a true epic): granite solidity, primal force, sexuality, shifting colours, pacifying destruction. “Dimmi il nome” is Pelù's endless scream, “Terremoto” the track beyond which a live performance simply cannot be asked to go any further. “Prima guardia” is a perfect rendering of the pre-Albachiara and Gaddafi-tinged atmospheres (modern crusades, soldiers in the desert, cathedrals, and home as ultimately indispensable for keeping peace of mind and the pleasure of dreaming) typical of the first two albums. Unmissable are the versions of “El Diablo”, “Gira nel mio cerchio”, “Tex”, “Cangaceiro”. Renzulli isn't an extremely gifted guitarist, but he fits perfectly with Pelù's voice, never hits a wrong note, and has an unmistakable sound (which, after all, was already apparent in the new wave period, when it was, rightly for the sake of the songs' economy, reined in by Maroccolo's bass); he avoids dull solos, he's essential: he manages never to leave you feeling abandoned, and conveys a friendly warmth (never rhetorical). Candelo does great work on the drums. Aiazzi (less and less on the electronic effects of the early days, more and more on simple keyboards) remains a reassuring presence of fundamental completeness.

Spirit (EMI, 1994), the first album not produced by Alberto Pirelli but boasting Rick Parashar (already behind “Ten” by Pearl Jam), despite shifting genre (almost entirely abandoning metal for world-latin music, though without going pop), tone and atmosphere, doesn't lower the depth (i.e. credible stimulus to live) achieved on Terremoto: “Lacio Drom”, dedicated to the Roma people, and “Lo spettacolo” are among the best anthems Pelù ever managed, while “Animale di zona” is the album's best track, bolstered by a dignified lyric and a “Stairway to Heaven”-style structure. “Diavolo illuso” is a non-tedious slice of grunge. “Tammuria” pairs mandolins evoking sunlight with heavy guitar work accompanying well-judged, fitting howls. “Suona fratello” (which reprises “Solitude” by Black Sabbath) is a perfectly realised experiment/ballad recorded on the sofa at Renzulli's house, made of guitar, voice, tequila. For the first time since the new two-man line-up (let's give Parashar a bit of credit too, if we like), after listening to the tracks there's no need to hear them live, revised and corrected (amplified), to appreciate them better: they're already fully formed as they are.

Urlo (CGD, 1993) and King of Silence (CGD, 1994) are worthy compilations put together by the old record label as a parting shot on the way out of the contract. Lacio Drom (EMI, 1995) is the first compilation (with an accompanying video, worth watching) from the new label, drawing on Sogno ribelle and pleasing for its touching version of a precious fossil from '84, “Onda araba”. Here ends what's worth saying about Litfiba. For the sake of completeness, it should be added that with Mondi Sommersi (1997) the band (with the exception of an astonishing track, like the leap of a paralytic, “Sparami”) descended into an unworthy dance-pop (reaffirmed by the scandalous live album Croce e delizia, EMI, 1998) and declared, as usual, that this album represented the fourth in a series dedicated to the four primordial elements (El diablo fire, Terremoto earth, Spirit air).

With Infinite, then, Pelù and Renzulli complete their descent into radio-friendly conformism, which would seem like the worst of it, if the two of them hadn't each gone on, separately, to do even worse.

Renzulli will carry on under the Litfiba name alongside a former Pelù fan, Cabo Cavallo, languishing through two albums: Elettromacumba (EMI, 2000) and Insidia (EMI, 2001). Pelù will let his rhetoric rot away on Neither Good nor Bad (EMI, 2001) and USD The Man in the Street (EMI, 2002).

Pelù's third album (Soggetti smarriti, 2004) essentially serves to dust off the old popular saying that there's no limit to how bad things can get: lyrics that are unintentionally inane (worse, striking a pose of being socially engaged and romantic), extremely crude and insipid music, bargain-bin philanthropy. But for this lost soul, Pelù isn't satisfied: he wants to sully the past too, with an utterly implausible and shoddy version of “Re del silenzio”.

In 2005 Renzulli/Cavallo release, to general indifference – which only underscores how sad the whole thing is – Being or Seeming.

In 2006 Pelù releases In Your Face, the most rock-oriented album of his solo career (though also the most derivative, since it borrows now from this act, now from that one); this is thanks to the work put into the guitars and rhythm section (the vocals remain stuck in mawkishness). It's in any case something the dreadful cover art sums up perfectly.

The reunion of the “glitter twins”

Unexpectedly – almost as if answering the ironic invitation of Elio e le Storie Tese – in 2010 Litfiba rise again. Piero Pelù and Ghigo Renzulli reunite, playing 4 concerts in April 2010.

Around the two Fiesole-born “glitter twins” and the ever-understated Magnelli – who seems to have handled the arrangement and production of the two new tracks – the “historic” absences of Maroccolo and Aiazzi (who had rejoined the band in 2003 only to leave again a few years later) stand out; they're replaced respectively by Daniele Bagni (bass) and Federico Sagona (keyboards), with Pino Fidanza on drums. All trusted, well-attuned people, in any case. More or less longtime collaborators of the Florentine band.

Stato Libero di Litfiba, a double live album packed with their main crowd-pleasers plus two new additions, is a faithful account of this much-trumpeted reunion, which took shape over a mini-tour of four concerts (plus three abroad). It's an intelligent choice and, all things considered, a smart move on the band's part, attempting a relaunch by diving back into a dimension, the “on the road” one, which has always been one of the main reasons to be drawn to them even in their less inspired moments (and there have been plenty, over the last two decades, if anything). Indeed, while the new songs amount to very little (the single “Sole Nero” and “Barcollo”, gritty but flat variations on the “hard-rock and environs” theme of “Terremoto”, with a few relapses into socially-charged lyrics) and the setlist favours the band's two crucial periods, the one most loved by critics (the '80s) and the one most loved by the public (the '90s), wisely skipping over the last album of the Pelù era and the black hole of the last decade, the hard, direct sound (angular guitar and drums, elastic bass and some decent keyboard excursions on the more wave-leaning tracks) and the rough, stripped-down arrangements both breathe new life into the early gems and also reinvigorate the weaker, middling tracks (like those taken from “Spirit”, the bluesy “Animale di Zona” and the gypsy-flavoured “Lacio Drom”, for instance, which come across far better than on record).

In short, the formula works, the repertoire is well-worn, the chemistry is there, and Pelù, even though he no longer has the shine he once had (though it's already a miracle his vocal cords haven't atrophied given all the dreck he's sung over the last ten years), keeps his vocal charisma intact, indulging in less of his usual histrionics but without giving up a few of his crowd-pleasing, populist rants (with Ratzinger as his preferred target).

Tracks like “Resta”, here brought back to its sharp, sinister dark-punk roots, the aching, Weimar-flavoured “Lulù & Marlene” (captured in an almost Doors-like take), the restless “Cangaceiro”, the anthemic “Dio”, the mex-punk medley of “Tex”/“Ferito”, the exoticism of “Paname”, the Mediterranean para-psychedelia of “Cuore di Vetro” and “Fata Morgana” (one of the few truly memorable songs the duo wrote after the 1989 split) escape any possible denigration or reappraisal and still strike straight at the heart like few others, even if they were being played by a cover band from Scandicci or Sesto Fiorentino. And likewise the biggest hits from the most “tamarrock” period (“Proibito”, “Gioconda”, the inevitable “El Diablo”, “Lo spettacolo”, the heavy tones of “Dimmi Il Nome”, the fine “A Denti Stretti”) benefit from the street-level, harsh and raucous edge with which they're performed live and unguarded.

The crowd bath hands down to new generations of fans a band in decent shape, still able to properly celebrate its own past and join forces in view of a future whose only certainty is that, whatever they decide to do, it can't possibly be worse than what's been smuggled through, under the same brand or in disguise, over the last murky years. To paraphrase the saying: "On stage, you never grow old."

From Stato Libero di Litfiba (2010) to Grande Nazione (2012). Litfiba's comeback seems to have set its sights on geopolitics: a trilogy devoted to nations, soon to be completed by the next chapter. But while the album from two years earlier felt mostly like a reunion among old friends, perhaps in response to the wish expressed by Elio e le Storie Tese ("Litfiba, get back together, a career as Renzulli and Pelù doesn't suit you"), the new record shows a bit more conviction. First of all, the conviction that the reunion wasn't just an opportunistic commercial stunt: "We screwed up by falling out in '98, but we won't make that mistake again... it took time, we had to clear up a lot of things, but now the tango starts again," announces a galvanized Pelù. A "Squalo" (or rather "squallooo", in his own words) made up like Jack Sparrow, a bloated and improbable pirate rocker, boarding the ship from start to finish, amid full-volume rock bluster and treacherous slides into demagoguery. Let's start by saying that "Squalo", with its faded heavy-rock, isn't exactly the ideal single to relaunch the Litfiba brand, and if even Renzulli calls it "maybe the worst track on the whole album", there must be a reason. And the rest? The new Litfiba basically turn it into a racket, hitting the accelerator right from the start, with a "Fiesta tosta" that tries to revive the old invectives against power updated to contemporary miseries, but the brushstroke, rather than bold, is just crude. Things don't improve in the other socio-political outbursts, from the punk-rock-flavored clichés of "Anarcoide", a sort of new "Maudit" 20 years on, to the assorted banalities of "Tutti buoni" and the anthemic "Grande nazione".

The showman Pelù of "Elettrica" and "Brado" ends up, alas, resembling his solo persona rather closely, and Renzulli struggles to contain his overflowing verve, unlike on "Tra Te e Me", where at least he manages to land a few of his trademark incisive riffs. "Luna Dark" tries to resurrect the old psychedelic, dark streak, but gets lost in limbo, with no way of standing comparison with landmark pages of ital-wave like "Tziganata" or "Istanbul". Ultimately, the best track is probably the closing one, the ballad "Una valigia", which at least offers a few decent melodic flashes. The deluxe version of the album also includes "Dimmi dei nazi", a tribute to Fernanda Pivano and the soundtrack to the film "Pivano Blues, sulla strada di Nanda".

In short, if we want to be generous, we could say this record will give many the chance to see them live (always a worthwhile experience) and to savor their classic warhorses in live form. And one can also appreciate the hint of self-irony that comes through on the record. But seeing one of the most important bands in the history of Italian rock reduced to just this is a bit painful.

In 2016 they close the trilogy of nations with "Eutopia". Not much seems to have changed since the days of "Terremoto" despite the twenty-three years gone by; or rather, nothing much seems to have changed in Litfiba's music, except for its sincerity. Pelù – in his new Jack Sparrow guise – keeps showing off his ostentatiously "cursed" persona ("better cursed than brain-dead"), against everything and everyone ("we are the monster you created"), against the "system", against the "powerful of the world". The recipe for opposing "power" is always the same: lyrics worthy of an angry high-schooler, childish slogans more suited to a Facebook post than to song lyrics. It's no coincidence that the best moment on "Eutopia" comes when Renzulli and Pelù decide to actually write a simple song ("Maria Coraggio"), keeping the chaos to a minimum and seeking brief moments of poetry and remembrance for Lea Garofalo, the young victim of the 'Ndrangheta.

Contributions by Simone Coacci ("Stato Libero di Litfiba"), Claudio Fabretti ("Grande Nazione"), Valerio D'Onofrio (Eutopia).

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