Edda
Semper Biot

I've read some reviews of this album, and it seems the right thing to do would be to talk about it as a work in itself, detached from the context, and not as the return of Stefano Edda Rampoldi after 13 years of total darkness, not only artistically. Well, I suppose that's right, but I can't manage it, so that's that.

Edda used to sing with the Ritmo Tribale, who were already around when After and Marlene were starting, and Verdena were still popping. I remember when "Psycorsonica" came out (which was already late), it opened with Oceano and they sounded just like Alice, and in 12 Linee there was the drum pattern from Wooden Jesus by Temple of the Dog, and I thought, damn, then it can be done here too. I don't know if I understood him well, bouncing around here and there with his long hair and skirt, looking like a junkie (for a good reason), and singing with a shrill, screechy voice that had nothing to do with, say, a Vedder. Not that I didn't like him, but I preferred more suffering stuff (more suffering? Oh, blessed youth). But I do remember some of his verses, at the level of the best Agnelli, yes, yes, and even, God forgive me, some Italian singer-songwriters. And I also remember the feeling of a clash between him and the rest of the band that came through in the grooves of the record, people behind him who wanted to sing and couldn't, kind of.

Well, at some point, this guy disappeared, and no one knew anything about him. His group without him was worth nothing and indeed lasted one more album (apart from pitiful reunions). And no one knew where he was, like the guy from Manic Street Preachers, no one knew anything; some said he was in India because he was Hare Krishna, others that he was dead, but instead, he was shooting up in Milan, exploding, imploding, entering rehab, and then coming out and working as a bricklayer, a real bricklayer. And between one construction site and another, he wrote these songs, and now, after 13 years, he's released them.

I want to write about this album because, in my opinion, it's an epochal album, in the sense that it marks an era. If it weren't by Edda but by someone else, I don't know, like Vasco Brondi, to say (the most immediate comparison, due to his sparse, simple yet careful arrangements, the acoustic instrumentation, and the voice in the foreground), what would I write about it? What would they write about it? It would probably still be seen as a great album, an excellent album. But damn it, it's Edda’s and so it's a masterpiece, it's more than an album, it’s the return of a piece of our adolescence, whether he likes it or not, because Edda is no longer just his but belongs to all of us who were there and lived music in our skin.

Indeed, perhaps first of all, "Semper biot" is an incredible album from a musical standpoint, it is a kind of small miracle. Let anyone else in Italy make an album of 12 songs with: an acoustic guitar played little and poorly, some very measured & well-placed interventions of violin-piano-synth-tympani-and-little-else, and the voice in your face, right in your ears, without any effect ever, without even reverb (but yes, it's there in the background, it's always there, but you really don't hear it). Eh, maybe someone else has done it, and too bad for them because now the comparison is pitiless. The voice above all, this voice, which the pounding rock of Tribale couldn’t fully exploit and now imposes itself as one of the most original, powerful, surprising, and technically perfect voices of Italian music and beyond.

But then it's a wonderful album for the way Edda bares his soul, "semper biot" indeed. Every song is a self-inflicted wound, some stylistic lapses (few) amidst spectacular peaks like "Being God is an easy thing, try doing my job" or "But sometimes I wish - you can always be worse off in life, but sometimes I wish for more, more than promises, more than gift vouchers, more than vacations, more" passing through absurdities like "You have no idea how strange it is to be a drug addict in Milan" or "Maybe I deserved such a shitty karma" or "Really, I just wanted to make love, let’s party a little and celebrate love again, man" that leave you speechless for how sincere, violent, and painful they are, that you never hear things like that damn. Edda who twists words, who sings about himself in the feminine, "I was born in an orphanage, I was born because I was too much".

Learn this album by heart, those of you who go on stage with a thin tie and the usual converse, and the little voice quiet, playing the alternative; you're just chicks, the alternative is your dad, idiot, and daddy Edda is here doing scaffolding and tearing our souls apart because that’s how you do rock, even with a little guitar with three strings, as long as there is plenty of breath in the throat, but also a lot of things to say, that come out a bit messy, but your voice puts them in line and makes even a nursery rhyme sound like a grand concert, imagine what it does with words that weigh like big rocks.

Maybe tomorrow or in a month I won't listen to this album anymore, so bare, sometimes repetitive, often incoherent and difficult. But tonight we are still young, you and I, Edda, and we have a drink, and we sing loud.