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Rating: Imagine taking a seat on a cozy red armchair, in a cozy theater, comforted by a cozy warmth in stark contrast to the anything but cozy temperature beyond the walls.
Imagine being surrounded by people of various ages, from teenagers to family fathers, and of different styles, from hipsters to indie-kids, from bearded to preppy, from pseudo-intellectuals to biker-likes who seem to have just parked their Harley Davidson outside.
Imagine that on an armchair like yours, a Jimmy Page lookalike is also seated.
Imagine starting a dream lasting about two hours, taken by the hand (or better said, by the ears) by a clear and melancholic female voice and guitar arpeggios, and transported from the year 2011 and that red armchair, directly into a western saloon cleared of thugs and turned into a refined place, near a railway, in a village bordering an Indian camp.
Imagine that the best, in reality, is yet to come. Imagine, then, that it arrives along with six guys who seem to have come straight out of one of those stone cottages, with a smoking chimney, wooden windows, and a well beside them, and with a little path in front of the door leading straight into the woods. Behind, the mountains.
Maybe the Blue Ridge Mountains. Maybe snowy.
One of those cottages inhabited by people whose only concern/task is to chop wood, work the land, content with wearing rags and living happily, with Brother Sun and Sister Moon. Imagine, why not, a beautiful starry sky above you. Stars that help that pale Sister Moon paint paths of light on the snowy slopes of those mountains.
Imagine then finding yourself immersed in this dimension, extra-temporal, bucolic, rural, at the same time earthly and celestial. Imagine that this dimension comes to LIFE as soon as the first note from the guitar of the leader of the six guys mentioned above resonates in the air.
Imagine that the aforementioned guy starts recounting stories, poems, and nursery rhymes that speak of a "brother" undertaking a journey, of Bedouin dresses, of people running down the mountains, of reflecting on oneself, on what one has been, of wondering what will become of oneself or why the Earth is now spinning around the Sun, of advising the little ones to be careful not to trip in the snow, making it red like strawberries in summer.
Imagine that all of it is enhanced, delicately and peremptorily at once, by choral harmonies that would cause no surprise if they came right from the openings in the walls of a Benedictine monastery.
Imagine technique at the service of genuineness, precision, and concentration at the service of emotion, power and control, the high and the low, earth and sky. You will easily imagine, at this point, not struggling to... imagine (!) being INSIDE something, that if it is not pure TRANSCENDENCE, it must at least be the antechamber to it, something that inevitably overwhelms you, making you vulnerable for a few moments. Wonderfully and comfortably vulnerable.
Imagine, as luck would have it, that the same guy I was talking about earlier ends the dream by singing of a certain "Helplessness Blues", which in Italian could well be translated as "blues of vulnerability".
Imagine leaving that cozy red armchair and the warmth of that theater, and with them the dream. Imagine, however, keeping the latter in your eyes, ears, and heart.
Imagine all this, if you weren't at Teatro Smeraldo yesterday to see the Fleet Foxes in concert.
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Fleet Foxes (+ Alena Diane), Teatro Smeraldo di Milano, 20-11-11
Fleet Foxes Setlist:
“The Plains/Bitter dancer”
“Mykonos”
“English house”
“Battery kinzie”
“Bedouin dress”
“Sim sala bim”
“Your protector”
“White winter hymnal”
“Ragged wood”
“Montezuma”
“He doesn’t know why”
“Lorelai”
“The shrine/An argument”
“Blue spotted tail”
“Grown ocean”
Encore:
“These days” (Nico cover) (Robin Pecknold and Alena Diane)
“Sun it rises”
“Blue ridge mountains”
“Helplessness blues”
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