Bad Stuff
Responsibly Unaware

Good: "Who the hell are these guys?" I didn't even know who they were, but by reading you'll understand why I decided to dedicate a review to their debut album.

But let's start from the beginning: a few days ago I came across an album by a new band discovered on the internet (it would always be better to discover them in local venues, let's hope the web doesn't replace those too, or else we're doomed...); the cover didn't catch my attention at all, but the enthusiasm of the person inviting me to listen did... okay, let's see what this is all about.

In the first few seconds of the first track, I immediately thought "here we go again, the usual cloned and impersonal 'punky' sound..." I would find out, listen after listen, that I was wrong, and not by a little. Because this album truly contains a bit of everything: mainly punk rock, but also post-punk, some catchy influences from across the channel, and a lot, a lot of pop melody. The voice is nothing special, it sounds very clean, often (perhaps too often) accompanied by backing vocals, it just modulates and sings in very believable English (you'll understand why I used this adjective at the end);
There are definite punk stylistic alternations to less clichéd choices, sometimes original for the genre, there is room for synthesizers in some pieces, some strong dance rhythms in the choruses of a couple of tracks; all of this makes the work anything but repetitive, not an easy feat for those who do punk, except for three or four "fillers" that perhaps ruin an otherwise generally pleasant album.

Last but not least: flipping through the booklet, I discovered, besides some excellent lyrics, that this trio is Italian: I had thought of everything but that they were compatriots, and this makes me more than happy... "I can't not review this material!", created by one of the many valid musical proposals we have in our country that often, unfortunately, go completely or nearly unnoticed. It is a debut album that seems decidedly better than other debuts with similar soundscapes that I've come across, and thanks to some key tracks ("Snapshot Of A Generation", "Fake", "Animal In The Night", "Mornington Crescent") manages to have its own particular attitude; in my opinion, a promising start, 3/5.