Massimo volume
Il nuotatore

THE REVIEW

What could "having something to say" possibly mean in 2019? In the impossibility of a clear answer, the question lends itself to a whole series of interpretations. The last time we heard from the Massimo Volume, they were "Aspettando i barbari". In the meantime, they have appeared, wreaking havoc by spreading hatred and ignorance, as if such things were ever in short supply in these latitudes. Now they look upon their work, contented with an unprecedented mediocrity. Stunned and powerless, we invoke "Nostra Signora del Caso" but it's more of a curse than a plea.

"Sometimes I imagine the world covered by a veil, which no one has the courage to lift to see what lies behind. I didn’t want to either, but then the wind rose, and what I dared not uncover I realized was worse than I feared." The warning from Emidio Clementi on the title track leaves little room for doubt: everything is infinitely sadder than we could have imagined, but now it's too late. So much so that today is gone: "Vedremo Domani" and "...if it's too hard for us, we'll blame someone." Isn’t that what everyone is already doing?

The guitars of Egle Sommacal weep on a bed of icy keyboards, the true protagonists of most of the tracks. Vittoria Burattini leads this solemn march through the ghosts of defeat with dry, no-frills rhythms. Clementi's lyrics shy away from anything consoling, accommodating, or indulgent. The truth is a daily slap to the face of the petty bourgeois in "La ditta di acqua minerale", unable to divert his mind from his own decay. Awareness takes on the gray hues of "Una voce a Orlando", with its unconfessed yearning for heroes in a world unfit to produce any.

A voice rises free and disillusioned from Clementi. Someone who has such an intimate and confidential relationship with writing that he can use rhymes with verbs in the infinitive without coming across as a fool ("Amica prudenza"). The guys have said what they had to say, whoever is able to respond should do so but with moderated expectations. Because: "...the truth is ugly, it’s frightening to see it naked."