Je Ne T'Aime Plus
La Prima Cosa

JE NE T'AIME PLUS - "THE FIRST THING"

or "electric ghosts and circus explosions"

The first thing you hear is a hallucinatory guitar together with an acidic voice, shot into your ears like a sonic bullet. "Everything Is Fine" says Bruno Fraschini, but something tells us that not everything is fine, if "the first thing in the morning is fear". This is how the first and only album by Je ne T'Aime Plus begins, which unfolds between "exhausting demons" and violent adolescent ghosts ("The Dead Lover", "In the Hate"), misunderstandings with epic choruses ("Song of Ignorance") and funky surgeries ("The Memory").

Don’t be fooled by the name, they had nothing to do with French song or Manu Chao: Je Ne T'Aime Plus was a band from Lodi offering their own brand of psychobilly, crafted from electro-circus diversions and hysterical merry-go-rounds. Max Carinelli’s (ex Circo Fantasma) guitar can be thunderous and powerful, but also thin and hissing like a snake’s tongue, and Gianluca Buoncompagni’s bass is precise and solid. Their lyrics glide between youthful anxieties, mature ironies, and chemical poetry. The "Ballad of the Inventor of a Lethal Weapon" has all the clarity and energy of a chart-busting single that does not resort to easy youthful anti-war themes, perhaps reminiscent of early Placebo but without Brian Molko’s annoying antics.

The Lodi quintet was compared to Marlene Kuntz, but I believe they possessed an awareness of their abilities and songwriting that was entirely personal. They called it Brutal-Pop. "The Little Chemist" is a merry-go-round with a transgenic body, with crushing and psycho-chemical rhythms. In "The Oracle" and "Fate", one dances over gutted wounds and tragicomic allusions to that circus of failures that our lives often become. Je Ne T'aime Plus are masters of their instruments, but when they play, it’s we who are no longer masters of ourselves, and it becomes natural to spin "like a propeller" and fly away with their devilish and acidic currents or settle like the sky before the storm, ready to burst into angry and yet ironic thunder.

The last thing you hear is a snow goddess, post-urban catharsis, called "Diosa Dea", with intense, cryptic lyrics, incomparable to anything else I’ve ever heard in the Italian indie scene. "Diosa Dea" appears sinuously on the horizon, "calls us, possesses us, and holds us all". "Diosa Dea" carries us elsewhere, but for now, we are safe, we can "sleep in the warmth of her arms". "Diosa Dea" has a magnetic, mantra-like guitar tail, a strum at the pickups and one at the headstock. "Diosa Dea" departs with a prolonged creak, with a whisper. The first thing, the next morning, will be fear, a fear turned into reality.

Dedicated to Bruno

"Diosa Dea"

"After a few meetings, she requisitioned my shadow / put it to act itself inside her pot / in the born world everyone has their role / the description fits like a glove on a hand / gave us costumes to appear as characters / bought all my mirages / sitting us down, she tells the parable / and shows her champion her tale

She calls us / El hombre che canta para encontrar respuestas / hombre che dorme para encontrar respuestas / and silent queen of the snow / diosa dea who owns us all / el hombre che canta para encontrar respuestas / hombre che dorme para encontrar respuestas / and silent queen of the snow / diosa dea who holds us all

She accompanies him to the exam of the wise / protects him from the rigors of the events / wears the desire glimpsed in the hero / demands for herself the kiss of the champion / you can sleep in the warmth of her arms / rest, abandon the threat / goes around with the voice on her lips / and kidnaps dreams from our faces"

Ps: if you are interested in the album, I highly recommend buying it, it’s priced politically; if you can’t find it around, contact me.