ONIRICA - Com’è bella la mia gioventù

The cover of Onirica's CD takes us back to an old snapshot from the late '60s/'70s, where two young people in a 500 gaze toward the horizon with a determined look to the future. Maybe it's the very same photo now shown off by some uncle with whitened hair and a few more wrinkles, a sign of the years going by and of disappointments endured, of some satisfactions enjoyed and of a dull routine that one so wanted to avoid in youth — that very youth evoked in the album's title.

The Neapolitan group knows how to tell, with delicacy and good taste, stories of dreamed-of loves, some of which worked out for a while before bringing some pain too. A passion lived out surrounded by Italian society with its false ideologies, its sanctimonious respectability that ends up breeding monsters, its hypocrisies and its crime-page news.

This album carries that melancholy, bittersweet flavor that comes through right from the opening track, "Il grande freddo dell'autunno 2005," where feeling takes on perverse, destructive forms. Musically, though, it's all rendered through a dreamy pop sound that, in several passages across the record, brings to mind the best of Belle & Sebastian, as well as some arrangements dear to Moltheni.

At the same time, though, the band knows how to stitch together a sound all its own, in which to dress the lyrics written in turn by Nicola D'Auria, Simone Morabito, and Antonio Sorrentino, who fantasize about a world made "of machines to build machines that work for us" ("Macchine"), describe the sick poetics of an executioner in his relationship with his victim ("Pupille"), or depict Pasolini's last idyllic moments before the massacre at the Idroscalo ("Giulia Gt").

There's also the theme of the relationship with the father, one that's always been too little discussed, and of whom there's an image of sacrifices, war, and trips to Africa for work or to shoot ("Pied-Noir!"). Or there's the one seen through the eyes of Roberto Calvi's son, who really only got to know his father from newspaper reports after he was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in London. In short, a family figure who's absent yet very much present alongside the powerful men who ultimately decided his fate ("Canzone per papà").

The album thus has its own substantial quality, thanks to stories delivered with real passion in the vocals and well arranged melodies, which above all paint a vivid picture of what it means to live in Italy, both on a personal and a social level.

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

22/01/2012