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Fourth album for the Pisan band Zen Circus and... what an album!
Brian Ritchie notices them, wants to produce them but eventually fully joins the group... and thus "Villa Inferno" is released under the name The Zen Circus & Brian Ritchie, with the former Violent Femmes drummer bringing a wealth of amazing collaborations...
It kicks off in high gear, "Dead Penfriend" a ride that grows verse by verse, the journey continues and arrives at a Talking Heads cover "Wild Wild Life" featuring guest keyboards by none other than mister Jerry Harrison, and then the Zen Circus' busker attitude lingers until the end, unfolds, chases, lets itself be carried by different languages (even Slavic in "Narodna Pjesna") and then you keep on dancing, moving, the butt shakes, Appino, Ufo, and Karim scream and abuse their instruments, they climb onto a "Beat The Drum", you close your eyes and think "but weren't the Clash gone?"... they're accompanied by the Deal sisters in "Punk Lullaby" and it seems that American alternative rock has made its home in Italy, infectious choruses that get stuck in your head, gypsies with no fixed abode of sounds, acoustic guitars with strings almost always tense, and then come the ballads, "He Was Robert Zimmermann" dedicated to Bob Dylan, "Oh, The River!" which in its awkward sweetness is charming and then the only three pieces in Italian that are a real delight, "Vana Gloria", "Figlio Di Puttana", and "Vent'Anni", which tell you about your wild years, to remember without crying about them though....
Because now we can all shout "WHEN I WAS TWENTY I WAS AN ASSHOLE"....
Tracklist and Videos
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