Baustelle
Amen

Achieving fame often means making compromises with the market; sure, you sell more records, but quality and beauty suffer. Especially after a success like the one that came with "La malavita," it was difficult to replicate themselves. And yet, they managed. "Amen," their fourth work, possibly travels on an even higher level, bordering (allow me to say) on perfection.

The three boys from Montepulciano are now Milanese in every respect, and this has greatly benefited the quality of their music. Theirs is fundamentally a refined and never trivial rock, often with new wave overtones (especially in the melancholy that surfaces here and there in the lyrics), not to mention their unique ability to recreate the musical atmospheres that permeated Italian films of the '70s.

"Amen" is a heavily played record, using not only the canonical instruments like bass, guitar, and drums but especially many, many strings (even an entire orchestra) and a brass section, making it symphonic, almost like a cinematic soundtrack. It is a pleasure to listen to, but not immediately; it needs to be discovered little by little: discover the soundscape that each song builds, instrument by instrument; listen to the lyrics and the avalanche of references that require some time to be all uncovered; hear the voices of Francesco and Rachele alternating, crossing, and merging.

There is a lot to say about the songs that make up the album...

"Charlie fa surf" is the first single released and is inspired by the sculpture of the same name by Maurizio Cattelan: Charlie is a spoiled child who wouldn't be harmed by a bit of discipline, but in truth, his nature is due to the conventions of the adult world, indeed "has his hands nailed by a world of grown-ups and priests" that prevent him from growing up and condemn and crucify his every freedom.

"Il liberismo ha i giorni contati" sounds prophetic, especially in a period like this, and the end is intuited by all the ugliness of society. However, it is strangely cheerful as a song. Very beautiful is the self-criticism according to which it is difficult "to resist the market", and especially in the verse "Sees the end in me selling records in this horrible way."

"L'aeroplano" is the most intense track on the album. Here Rachele truly outdoes herself, with her velvety yet at the same time icy singing. It reflects whether the future was what one expected as children, while the years pass by, if all that remains is "a city, an always identical job, a song that serves as background to the Indecipherable" while time flies away like a plane, taking everything with it, love stories, hopes, and illusions.

"Baudelaire" is instead the most driven song, apparently a beautiful eulogy, indeed, an apologia to the decadent poet, inviting the listener "to the gardening of the flowers of evil! In reality, other more or less "cursed" artists are also celebrated.

"Antropophagus" is incomprehensible until you know that the lyrics speak about the varied humanity, hobos, immigrants, "Russians and Lithuanians" that populate the area in the immediate vicinity of Milan's central station.

"Alfredo" revives the story of Alfredino Rampi, the child who in 1981 fell into a well and held the whole of Italy in suspense for three days. But the story ended badly, and here it is relived from the child's side, in whose imagination the rescuer who vainly tries to save him becomes Spider-Man, while God from above watches impassive, along with all the rest of the television and non-television spectators. Here Francesco mimics De André a little, but the lyrics are indeed substantial.

"Dark Room" begins with Anonimo Veneziano-style violins, then blossoms into a delightfully '60s bossa nova, in which it sings the sensations and thoughts when meeting a new person, even if for just one night.

"L'uomo del secolo" is a sort of farewell from an elderly man who serenely approaches the end ("... and here I am: a vegetable. A hundred years not badly worn. I leave the world that mistreated me. I'm leaving, I'm fed up. I loved you. Now I go") and before doing so, he summarizes his long and dense life. It is the story of Francesco's grandfather, who recently passed away.

"Ethiopia" is entirely instrumental and should be considered a progressive experiment, very successfully executed, to tell the truth.

And finally, enjoy "Spaghetti Western", the hidden track that tells this story where cowboys are Italians, the far west are the red gold fields of southern Italy... and the part of the Indians? Naturally, this role is for the seasonal immigrants who break their backs in the fields. It's all seasoned with a generous amount of cinematic sauce.