Baustelle
Sussidiario illustrato della giovinezza

The little radios sing puberty / The little radios say oh-oh-oh-oh

Italy, childhood and adolescence between the '80s and '90s, captured with vivid, refined shots, literary lyrics, music that combines singer-songwriter tunes with a masterful pop and light new-wave air. Il Sussidiario Illustrato della Giovinezza (2000, Baracca & Burattini) is a photo album, a book of memories, a glance inside its time. As you turn the pages, the Baustelle fire shots to the heart one after another: you're catapulted on electronic rhythms onto a summer bus in 1983, into Martina's small catastrophes, among amphetamine-fueled love crises, kidnapped girls, auditions for erotic films, lovers in the park...

The album opens with the rhythm and suspended chords of Le Vacanze dell'83, their first epic refrain, which masterfully transforms from electronic to bossa nova and culminates in glory with old radios playing on the beaches of Rimini, escalating drums, guitar outbursts, and a tailpiece crashing straight into the arpeggios of Martina: visions without pills, visions of '83. Martina is an angel of dense mascara, her soul of honey, the guitar arpeggios and flights, her catastrophes are sliced by chords. Sadik encloses a murky story in the rhythm of a la-la-la ditty, while Noi bambine non abbiamo scelta is an ethereal melody plunging into (sweet) apathy. Gomma is twilight poetry of '80s reminiscences on an oppressive thump of bass and absolute new-wave synth: a race through the months, we find old photographs of love and adolescence among guitar sparks; I trembled a bit with blue anguish / and useless existence / licking bitter candies / and springtimes already faded with you - confession-recollection and memory in 3 minutes and 45.

La Canzone del Parco is another step into poetry, rising to an almost metaphysical gaze: a slow tango of plucked strings intertwined with words sung by Rachele Bastreghi's dark voice, a lyric of a moment imploring time to drive away useless questions. Two lovers embraced in a smiling park, on clouds of desires, under the gaze of silly branches.

What do these fragile humans think
what are my silly branches for
what are they for if I let myself be taken by useless thoughts
I can only exist
Eternally live without having
the moments of young lovers
of young loves

An organ with electronic interference tries to play redemption for the story of Virginia and her toxic lover: La canzone del riformatorio is a hallucinated vision that could arise from the meeting between De André and the Velvet Underground on an epic melody, a vision of shattered lives while a choir without words starts on the unanswered questions:

...it was a poorly cut dose, the humidity overwhelmed me
but I maintained a certain style, I looked at you
with irrational happiness
with the caress of heroin that lulled me
will you forgive me, Virginia?

...love, where will I be in five years?
and who will you be, and who will we be?
outside the reformatory, the lost lives
like joy gone forever like fashion
what makes us prisoners?

The elegant Cinecittà (an audition for an erotic film), Io e te nell'appartamento, and Il Musichiere 999 close: a sort of Gainsbourg a bit under ketamine for a refined, decadent album, a snapshot of its years. Do you write, yes, do you write or not / your erotic novel?

September, school courtyard, twenty cigarettes, the first hoodie after summer and the new wave for high schoolers... perhaps, the poetry is all here.