Masalas
Ghisa

So, you can't buy this album nor will you find it reviewed on Pitchfork. It is only published online and you can download it for free from the band I MASALAS' website (www.masalas.it).

It's an Italian band, apparently from Florence, that I came to know last year during a quick concert at a venue around the city. This GHISA is actually the band's second work but it's also the most cohesive and fascinating. They are 10 songs recorded live played in a messy and rough manner but with a communicative vehemence that has few precedents, especially in Italian music (especially "alternative" music). Besides the music, a mishmash of whitefunk garage mazurka and tear-jerking ballads with crashing guitars, the lyrics survive.

I'm impressed by the personality, the originality of the phrases and themes that are never trite, never settled, the total authenticity of these words. Words that on first inattentive listen made me think of the usual surreal and semi-demented rock only to realize later that, even when this guy blurts out equivocal songs with his tripe-seller accent from Piazza della Passera (the "c" in these songs is a luxury you can do without), they are memorable and poetic beyond poetry. Imagine a crossover of Federico Fiumani with Mark E. Smith, a Morrissey who's the son of Riccardo Marasco. In this band's words, there's a world of ordinary precarious people in daily life, deluded and playful then melancholic and terrified (Re del Mobilio, Zoo di Pistoia, Semifonte).

Up to the final catharsis. The last song, of which I won't give away anything except the fact that it's unclear whether to laugh, cry or turn off your brain. It will seem like a lousy demo made by the usual amateurs, for me it was a discovery to share.