Morose
People Have Ceased to Ask Me About You

The beauty of certain people is that you never stop getting to know them.
I met him years ago, by chance, but he had always remained somewhat indifferent to me: I don't mean unfriendly, but not very friendly either. His kind yet elusive gaze, his timidly faint smile when we crossed paths, his somewhat solitary demeanor that led him to shy away from large groups. What was beautiful, though, was that every time we talked, interesting conversations emerged, a sign that he had things to say and ideas to share, but perhaps he kept them to himself. At the time, I thought I would never want to trade places with him, he always seemed a bit lonely and unhappy to me, the exact opposite of what I was at that moment. But, as often happens, we grow even when we think we are already mature; life changes us in ways that are not understandable, we adapt to the flow of events, we bend to survive, we transform. And then, after years of not seeing each other, I met him again, and it was like looking in a mirror: suddenly, I was just like him, we greeted each other with the exact same shy, faint smile, exchanged a few polite words, and then conversation after conversation an hour went by without me even realizing it. The gray and monotonous sky of a cold mid-December day perfectly matched the piercing chill of a wind that seemed to carry snow soon after: leaning against a low wall, we retraced all the years during which we had lost each other. We talked about how we are closed in on ourselves, how we have built a fortress in which we have included only a few chosen people, leaving out all the others to whom we shyly smile, only to move on. We talked about some aches and pains that are tormenting us but haven't stopped us from doing what we love and what brings us joy, peace, and freedom; we confessed to having developed the tendency to tear up when watching certain movies we once would have avoided like the plague (how many tears on "Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain!"); we confessed that sometimes we feel alone, that we feel nostalgia. But it's a strange nostalgia, it's both for things already experienced and for things we haven't experienced at all, but somehow miss. We didn't define ourselves as unhappy, just, well, overwhelmingly nostalgic and melancholic: but we couldn't figure out if it's a bad or a good thing, after all, for now, we're fine this way.
We said goodbye, promising not to lose each other again, then each went their way: at some point, I turned around to see where he was going, but he had vanished into thin air, disappeared, as if he had never existed. I told myself that maybe it's normal for him to disappear like that without anyone noticing, but I'm still convinced that we'll meet again soon.
Morose hail from La Spezia, and they are not a novelty to me, having had the chance to appreciate and love "On the Back of Each Day," the successor to the one present here "People have ceased to ask me about You." It is with this album that they develop their own genre that will be revisited later, a mix of songwriting, apocalyptic folk à la Black Heart Procession, minimalism reminiscent of Nick Drake, post-rock, and slowcore. The result is a late-winter album, reflective, melancholic but not sad: for some, it might be dreary and dirge-rock, but I am convinced that at certain moments, or on cold and cloudy days at the end of autumn, an album like this can be a valid mirror for us to stop and reflect a bit on ourselves. With a timid smile.