La quiete
Tenpeun 01-05

Tenpeun, or The Childhood of Perfection.

I primarily apologize for this review, I don't think I'll be able to write, speak objectively (was it ever possible?), neglecting feelings and whatnot. These will be imprecise, indistinct, probably deceitful words. I also ask those who will read all this to be as sincere as they are lenient.

For everyone, for many, at least for me – it's well known a man's need to make their story the story of everyone – it happened to hear “Spiderland” before “Tweez”, or more generally, Slint before Squirrel Bait, more simply “Nevermind” before “Bleach” and so on. You always start with what's most famous, most important, most influential, and then you move on to what came before, to the childhood of Perfection.

And when you do something like that, you have the feeling of becoming more attached to it, like something closer, more familiar, more friendly, not that it is necessarily better, not that it is necessarily more beautiful, but it's like seeing your heroes playing with toys and going to bed at ten, or eleven when it's Christmas. You listen to the screams of La Quiete from 2002 and feel like they could be your friends, those who timidly make you listen to what they recorded a week before, and anxiously await your opinion, halfway between fear and excitement. And you, surprised, maybe tell them they'll make it big, that if they keep going, they'll get there, even though you probably know they never will. They are friends, Your friends. And you are there, with them, inside what you're listening to.

But perhaps I should talk about the album. “Tenpeun” is a collection that La Quiete released in 2006, exactly two years after that masterpiece “La Fine Non è La Fine,” nineteen tracks recorded starting from 2001, scattered almost randomly over thirty-two minutes of music. There's the pure and primordial violence of “Mandorle Amare.” or “Greyskull,” but also the innocent and spontaneous melody of “Che Tu Sia Per Me Il Coltello” or the wonderful ending, “Alle Foglie”, where there's even a subtle line of piano. It is probably a fragmented, heterogeneous, and imprecise work (as I imagine this review is), but it is indeed a summary of what was the birth and slow evolution of a group that quietly made its way, which over time learned to scream out its name, as if it already knew, as if it felt within itself that Perfection it would one day reach, like an unconscious and silent destiny. Yes, it is likely, they already knew, they had always known, since they lingered with the little trucks on the cover, they knew. And now I know it too.