AFTERHOURS - Ballate per piccole iene

While managing to maintain a sufficiently high standard, "Non è per sempre" and "Quello che non c'è" showed a loss of centre of gravity stemming from a desire to experiment with new approaches, which had undoubtedly sacrificed Manuel Agnelli's shamanic expressiveness on the altar of absorbing musical models far removed from the band's original proposition. With "Ballate per piccole iene", the Afterhours go back to twisting the knife in the flesh, with a handful of deceptively passionate compositions in which the gospel of rock'n'roll is laid bare with firm conviction in the band's usual alternation of furious outbursts and moments of bitter, disillusioned reflection.

Agnelli's songwriting is always focused, never baroque, and above all aware of having reached full maturity, able to channel his feelings with pop effectiveness, but also to conjure up a sinful game of simulation and dissimulation, caught between the grandeur of a seasoned singer-songwriter and the memory of noisy adolescent alternative outbursts. It's an adult dimension that makes Agnelli a fully-formed figure on the Italian music scene and sets him up for possible — and well-deserved — commercial success, perhaps even beyond Italy's borders. To give the whole operation an international scope, he surrounded himself with a cast of characters of undoubted stature and "alternative moral standing", such as his drinking companion Greg Dulli, co-producer of the album, and John Parish, who handled mixing on half the tracks. "Ballate per piccole iene" is a record with a leaden atmosphere, where darkness creeps along beneath the surface, almost timidly, yet still manages to wrap the unsuspecting listener in its coils.

Anger, unease and bitterness are feelings that have constantly permeated Afterhours songs, but here they seem like lethargic killers, ready to strike yet motionless, present yet distant, repressed by time, by now coagulated into a disillusionment born of experience. The purely introspective moments stand out as the most rewarding, and even where the guitars clatter to the fore the noise is always composed — see "Così com'è", the bastard offspring of various songs like "Germi" and "Male di miele". There's no sense of trying too hard, of striving to write the definitive song, a temptation Afterhours have often given in to before, but "La sottile linea bianca" could rightly become just that, with its brooding gait, caught between falsetto vocals and timid distortion sailing over a delicate piano backdrop. A little further on, around "Ci sono molti modi", an Agnelli devoted to the cult of the pensive ballad surfaces again, while "La vedova bianca" brings back overpowering white-noise bacchanals.

A mention is also due for the single "Ballata per la mia piccola iena", which serves as the perfect high-impact track, with its barely sketched melodic line repeated over an ever-building, never-quite-exploding guitar crescendo. Beautiful and defacing.

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09/12/2005