MILAUS - JJJ

Two years of work, perfecting a dialogue with a nature

that, slipping into the whirl of the seasons, skirts private lives and widens the

narrow horizons of a sleepy provincial town. The Milaus are back, one of the bands

most beloved on the Italian underground scene. The band from Valtellina try to

follow up on and continue in the wake of that "Rock Da City", which back in 2003

had made a good impression. Indie-(pop-)rock (for whatever that's worth…),

caught between complexity and lightness, melody and noise. It's the backdrop against which

the nine tracks on this "JJJ" also move, open to grasping the

wonders that fill the horizons of small things, capable of entertaining and

surprising ("Attitude To The Funny Things"; "Traffic"). A small world,

provincial indeed, yet one in which the big themes still manage to make

their voice echo, even if, truth be told, the music almost never

seems to match their lyrical weight.

You can't have it all in

life, as they say. "She's Back Again", on the theme of return, glides over restless

filigrees, sketching out mystery behind minimal, intangible settings ("It's

Coming"). Also in the foreground, the warmth of a life on the verge of awakening

springlike, where freedom feels like an exhilarating adventure ("It's

A Miracle", an outburst that arrives suddenly and is, all things considered, not very striking). Lysergic

guitar leads and clumps of noise, a good dose of off-kilter singalong quality and mild

echoes of Pavement, Sebadoh, dEUS… and so on and so forth. Don't

ask for more, just look the other way. Content yourselves with going back over the lesson from

jagged angles ("Searching In All Love Songs"), throwing themselves body and soul into

an impetuous charge that wearily fades into mournful resignation,

or else savoring the bittersweet taste of memory, getting funky in an

uninhibited way ("As I Used To Be").

Milaus seem, now more than ever,

undecided, in transition, searching for the needle rather than the compass. The

usual full-on "punk" assault ("So Beautiful") and the sweeping curves of the title

track frame a solid, respectable effort that will certainly please the fans.

Yet, in the vast ocean of today's musical output, "JJJ" comes across as exactly

one of those records that ends up exhausting all its nuances within the

a brief spin. In short: a disappointment. But we're confident about the

future, not least because these guys have shown talent in the past.

Ride the wave of great music

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30/04/2026