L'orso
Un luogo sicuro

L'orso, a band name that has echoed in my mind several times over the past few months, through friends and acquaintances, but which has never aroused profound curiosity in me until today. With these premises, I make up my mind and open Spotify, where I find their latest album "Un luogo sicuro", released in March 2016. I start listening and track by track, title by title, I manage to partially grasp the meaning of the name given to the album: a space-time passage between what has been and what will not be, between what is and what is desired. Three spaces in total that mark the listening time, three interconnected mental and physical places. Just open your eyes to start the journey into space ("Open your eyes we are in space (place 1)") and close them, when you have found your own space (in the world): with this cyclicality, the record begins and ends ("Close your eyes we are home (place 3)").

Getting into the swing of things, the catchiest track on the album is "Non penso mai", light and musically lively, enough to evoke the superficiality and volatility of time, which makes everything so negligible and at the same time necessarily necessary. Thoughts that find no completion in the extreme flow of routine, the thinking of not thinking, have a final release in the "safe space" of love.

Going further, "Esser felici qua" confirms how the certain space a relationship can and must have is strictly the known physical one, here where you are; elsewhere is not conceived. The departure for "there" as opposed to "here" disrupts the much-sought-after serenity with the beloved.

"L'uomo più forte del mondo (scratch Dj Dust)" is the fourth track and perhaps represents the weakest piece of the album from both a stylistic and musical point of view; the lyrics are unoriginal and unconvincing within the dissonant hip-hop framework in which it is enclosed.

We are halfway through the album, the keystone for entering the second place ("Io credo in te, la tua magia è? vera (place 2)") and which seems to be challenged by a punctuation error, making the title a real halfway question. There is no more room for loving according to the words of the author. Why write and why stay, affirmations that leave room for a true Hamletic doubt.

The next track brings to mind sounds I've already heard and after a few listens, I realize that (a bit like the whole album perhaps) there's a nod to the sounds of the Roman band I Cani. The track highlights the desire to create a physical-temporal space that does not yet exist but is taking shape before the conclusion of the album. A new world, which the artist's hands want to seek and build. The melancholy of a past love that is elaborated, in search of the continuum of memory.

I'm almost at the end of the album, which in total has a meager complete set of 12 titles; still, I find nothing particularly distinctive and memorable. In fact, the next two tracks do nothing but analyze once again the theme of melancholy and regret.

The final title "Chiudi gli occhi siamo a casa (place 3)" is almost liberating (not only for L'orso, but also for me), with the final chorus repeated several times citing "I just want to be home...". The recall of a known and familiar place like the home: here is the safe place that the space we all seek in this life must resemble.