Les Fauves
N.A.L.T. 2 Liquid Modernity

Bizarre, these Les Fauves.

They adopt the name of a French painting collective from the early last century, borrow the title "Liquid Modernity" from a famous sociological treatise by Z. Bauman, and conceive a multi-year plan of record releases grandiosely naming it project N.A.L.T (Noise Arms Limitation Talks). You will agree, there's reason to be prejudiced, too many irons in the fire. Then when it's discovered they originate from none other than Sassuolo, in the province of Piana Ipermercata, the instinct to ignore them and double down on other trivialities spontaneously kicks in. Who the hell do they think they are??? Come on now...come on...

Instead. Surprise. The speakers deliver a sound in which I immediately recognize myself, denied to my senses for too long, that soothes from torpor and exposes all my addiction to the homogenization that plagues the new British and American generations: simple, pure, and therapeutic psychedelic pop.

The flow of the eleven tracks amazes from the first listen; while overwhelmed by a whirlwind of flashbacks, my mind unburies Syd Barrett, Stranglers, That Petrol Emotion, Pere Ubu, Jesus Couldn't Drum, Keats, Razorcuts, TV Personalities along with forgotten and offbeat gangs of indigenous aspiring mad hatters like Peter Sellers and the Hollywood Party, I am literally kidnapped by my ghosts and brought back to the dear places of adolescence and passion. At the end of the trip, when I pry myself off the couch for an encore, I can’t help but be pleased with the purchase, given so many disappointments suffered in recent years; I find myself smiling and shaking my head, thinking that the four young Les Fauves are right to think of themselves as great, a group with international appeal, because "Liquid Modernity" is not only a viaticum for the redemption of the Via Emilia from the Vasco - Ligabue axis, it is above all indie-pop at the state of the art, a carousel of existentialist nursery rhymes drunk on melody that echoes the great neo-psychedelic season of the eighties, what we would expect from the best of perfidious Albion's youth rather than from the children of Emilia Paranoica of the past.

Instead. Second surprise.

And since each of the songs collected here represents the best music produced this year, not just in the land of "cachi," I refrain from boring you with the usual listing of titles; to the indifferent, the deaf, the nitpickers, those who will point out the limited technical abilities of Les Fauves, the English singing that betrays their origins and the rough production of "Liquid Modernity," I object that these are not flaws but rather the toll to the "expressionist" urgency of ours. If we really must, we advise them to avoid pretentious labels on their genuine creativity (fine for the liquidity of modern society, but Noise Arms Limitation Talks doesn't seem to scare and mislead?).

I am already eagerly awaiting the third chapter of the saga; do not succumb to indifference and listen: there are already plenty of very normal people in Italy.

Beasts, these Les Fauves. Or, as they would prefer: badass, these faves.