Lillians
I Wish I Lived This Life

This story begins with the advent of raunchy American comedies, through which kids my age or slightly younger approached adolescence with the mindset of those who let the wind blow through one ear and out the other: that gust of stupidity for its own sake, zero comic relief outbursts, sex never so thinly veiled, and urges we were no longer ashamed to hide. In this context, the last formula of true pop-punk flourished.

Today the genre has mutated until it is unrecognizable, having disastrously collapsed on itself around the turn of the millennium's first decade. So we not-so-young people find ourselves digging through some drawer we had carefully sealed, without, however, forgetting where we hid the key. You never know when it might come in handy.

And indeed, here we are, pulling it out from yet another drawer, itself jam-packed with keys, ready to bring to light something we treated as trivial just yesterday but that, upon reflection, has gained importance over the years.

Why? Because today you can no longer stumble upon those shores by casually zapping through TV channels; the wave must be awaited and recaptured, and writing songs with the same cheeky pandering as bestsellers is no longer enough to seem even remotely presentable.

There they are. Providential, plausible. The Lillians.

Three protagonists from that era who delivered a lively and prolific scene like Romagna's, reunited under the same banner with an attitude towards songwriting inherent to pop, featuring verses supported by solid and intricate rhythmic sections, redundant choruses, and everything else. Sure, here there’s nothing fucking funny, as Filippo Cinotti and company touch those chords that at least then lay dormant until the end of vacations, between one school year and the next, waiting for the cold to return to devour us, bringing everything crashing down on us like shit.

"I Wish I Lived This Life" is the watercolor of a future not too distant, perhaps not bright but nonetheless illuminated, where there is no regret for not having lived even and especially these days made of hate and love. The formula borrowed from hits of the golden age of chart punk gives the album deliberately nostalgic atmospheres, while the stories of three musicians dealing with the daily lives of those dangerously closer to 40 than 30 parade in the foreground.

This is what makes the Lillians credible: self-awareness, the declared intent to use a tool twenty years old to tell about themselves today.

Navigating through the vocal interweavings of "17," the minor chords of "Another Lie," the layered voices of "22" returns the image of a present photographed with a fish-eye lens, ennobling sounds buried by tons of titles time has mortified.

A marvelous debut work.

It is not known whether the Lillians, looking back, will say they regret not enjoying this life. What remains is a new page. The story continues...