Famelika
Live @ Palermo

When Music Smells Like Earth.

The sound that makes you proud, fills your chest with pride, at least for tonight.. Only a Sicilian can understand me.. Caught between infamy and shame for the dead, the silences, and that cursed MAFIA mentality from which we will never free ourselves.

BECAUSE at electoral parties in Sicily, people go with a resume in their pocket ("give me a job and I assure you a certain number of votes"), BECAUSE Sicilians used to settle for a package of pasta, now in Borgo Vecchio they sell 100 Euros per vote, BECAUSE if you ask for a receipt, the cashier sighs. And when you really think you have no more hope, Famelika arrives.

The group in question was born in 1998 in Misilmeri, a town in the province of Palermo. If you are born in Misilmeri, it's easier to open a howler monkey shop than to start playing in a Rock band (!!) singing lyrics against the mafia (!!!!). Their lyrics are frescoes that speak of landscapes, stories halfway between Sciascia and Pirandello, of brave heroes who never prevail and always succumb to overpowering forces. Yes, they succumb, but they do so convinced of their truth, and for this, they are not losers, but winners. Musically, their rock with folk undertones alternates with electric tarantellas, absolutely characteristic accordion interventions, as well as their "coppole" worn during live performances, confirming their (and our) desire to reclaim the primary peculiarities of "Sicila Bedda".

Among the tracks, "Giovà" stands out, the story of a boy who does not remain silent like the "fish, who can't speak and think they are free" but speaks, screams, and "gasping, expired"; the sharp irony of "La villa del boss" (with a very "cheating of you" intro by Franz Ferdinand); the post-rock drive of "Blues del benessere". In "carne spoglia" you realize that between the "modern malaise" "(very fashionable around Bergamo---an obvious reference to Verdena---) and the less modern but real as a monthly protection payment, there is a substantial difference. And when at the end of the concert they advise you to download their tracks ("you should find them on Emule") and you see them struggling to fit instruments and amplifiers on a yellow Opel Agila and a white Panda, you believe it..

You truly believe it and decide to write the review on debaser so that someone reads it.. maybe intrigued, they download the songs, fueling the hope that one day it will all end, because the Sicilian people don't sell themselves. They don't sell anymore. I don't want the former prime minister at a rally in Messina to promise 3 Milan players to the local team if he wins the elections. We don't sell anymore.