Envy
Insomniac Doze

He couldn't sleep, he had a ringing in his head, a distant voice that he didn't understand where it came from, and he didn't know what it was saying. He got up from the bed and, pulling back the curtain, leaned out: it was dawn, there was a faint breeze that made the flowering branches of his peach tree scrape against the glass of his window, but the sky seemed clear. It would be a good early spring day.

Suddenly he felt an urge to walk: he put on his tracksuit, his shoes, a jacket, and off he went. JD went down the steps of his house, crossed the courtyard, and made his way down the deserted avenue: there was no one around yet, but you could sense the life inside the houses, beyond the walls, beyond the closed shutters. A light from a window faintly illuminated a garden: it came from a living room, there was a father inside, with his newborn son in his arms, rocking him while giving him a bottle, and it seemed he was singing something, perhaps a nursery rhyme. JD couldn't hear him but saw him, saw his eyes, his relaxed face despite the early rising, he perceived the peace and the love. Step by step, he reached the end of the avenue, and the sun was already starting to make its presence felt: he couldn't believe he had walked so much, the avenue seemed so long... He didn't have a watch with him, so he didn't know what time it was, but judging by the bustle of the street, it seemed that suddenly everyone had woken up, got dressed in a hurry, and thrown themselves headlong into their usual activities. He should have gone back home and gone to work, but deep down he thought no, today he wanted to dedicate to himself, today he wanted to walk.

It was beginning to get very hot, as if suddenly even the sun was in a hurry to work, to complete its usual, annual paths: more than early spring it now seemed to be early summer. He turned toward his home: it didn't seem so distant, yet he felt he had walked a lot... He looked at the peach tree: the flowers had been replaced by beautiful fruits, which stood out in the sunlight. Strange, he thought, but he kept on walking. On the street, children were playing, in swimsuits, and he too was forced to gradually take off his jacket and the top of the tracksuit; he passed the ice cream truck, glimpsed his neighbor walking the dog, in flip-flops and a tank top, and after a while reached the park in his neighborhood: full of people playing, singing, running, and celebrating. JD looked at them and smiled: he didn't understand what they were celebrating, but it didn't matter, the atmosphere was pleasant, so he leaned against the fence for a moment and watched them.

A gust of cold wind hit him from behind: he turned and saw with amazement the avenue full of puddles, as if after a storm; even the trees had lost their beautiful fruits, even the sun seemed to be more distant, a bit sadder. The light it spread on the houses, on the grass, on the avenue was orange, but it didn't warm, it was just strongly nostalgic. He turned back toward the park: all those people were gone, replaced by couples walking hand in hand, stepping on a crackling carpet of dry leaves. He looked up, his attention was drawn by a flock of birds flying overhead, headed who knows where. There was a veiled sadness in the air, despite the couples' embraces, despite the smell of smoke coming from who knows which garden (probably someone was burning dry branches), despite the pleasant crackling of the leaves under his feet. It started to get cold, so he was forced to put his jacket back on and even pull up the hood, which, in his haste, fell over his eyes. In the space of a second, just enough time to adjust his hood, the avenue had changed again.

It was dark now, there was no one around: the only movement he managed to perceive was that (strangely enough!) of the snow, which was beginning to fall from a dark and completely veiled sky. JD felt cold, decided to quicken his pace and head home: again that urgency with which he had woken up in the morning, but this time much less positive and serene, pushed him to return to bed as soon as possible, almost as if something bad was about to happen to him. He had just enough time to cast quick glances at the brightly lit windows, behind which agitated figures wearing heavy sweaters moved and held parcels of all kinds. The journey home was inexplicably shorter than the way there, and in a few steps, he reached his peach tree again, now reduced to a skeleton: he looked at it, with a hint of sadness, shook the snow from his shoes, and re-entered the house: the next day, he would wake up a little sadder, and inexplicably older (a bit like that old sailor from that old story he had read the night before).

Sometimes you come across albums that, with their cyclicity, with their almost programmed changes of mood and atmosphere, make you think about the course of a life, the changing of the seasons, the passing of days. "Insomniac Doze" is one of these, an album in which, piece by piece, moods and scents alternate, and in which the Japanese band Envy has masterfully managed to convey their serene melancholy and their tacit anger.

Not very different from their other works, but equally a visionary journey, a large canvas that the listener helps to paint, with their colors and images, listen after listen.