GOMMA
Toska

The hype, as abstract and immaterial as it may be, is a powerful lever in the artist's hands when well harnessed. Sometimes, as strange as it may be, there's no need to reason with it—it's just like this, as the river descends impetuously and flows swiftly in its natural bed straight towards its natural mouth.

Gomma is a very young band from Caserta, recently formed, and they find themselves somewhat representing this dynamic flow.
A demo in spring ("Aprile") and a single ("Sottovuoto") released in October were enough to attract the sympathies of many among those sensitive to the latest trends and gain the attention of online and print magazines, which, despite the limited expectations initially set, have given the boys some exposure.

“Toska” (a Russian word evoking feelings suspended between nostalgia and anguish) released by V4V Record gathers those sparse cards previously thrown out and builds the first castle on them between existentialist lyrics, cinematic references (the beginning of "Elefante" is taken from a Jean-Luc Godard film from 1960) and literary ones (Pavese), narrating the story of an Alice who becomes the protagonist in the discovery of herself along an inner journey lasting just over 20 minutes.

The peculiarity of Gomma, unusual for the proposed genre, is the female voice of Ilaria, suspended between timid hints of spoken-word and dark laments, while in the background of the bedroom one can see the black and white posters of Fine Before You Came from "Sfortuna". Surely, there's the love of the four for the Fugazi.

Alice's adventures are sketched out sometimes subtly, sometimes more pronouncedly, more than by songs, still by brief sketches that will need to be developed in the future, starting from the intensity of the title track, “Arrendersi” and “Elefante” which, with those repeated arpeggios and two lines of text repeated like a mantra, were the right shake at the right moment.

And even though the applause meter may have perhaps been pushed too far, it should still be said, also considering the age of the members (the singer is not yet 18, and the others are just over), that it is not a rhetorical exercise to state that, at the moment, judgment is suspended awaiting the next stops that will chart the path.