Moondog Jr.
Everyday I Wear A Greasy Black Feather On My Hat

In the winter of 1995, as far as I can remember, I was still young.

I had recently discovered the existence of a new adjective, and, as with any fresh linguistic conquest, I was eager to experiment with its use in a daily context. The listening of "Everyday I Wear...", in this sense, fit like a glove.

According to the dictionary, sornione is someone who manages to conceal their intentions and thoughts behind an apparently benign, indifferent, or reserved demeanor.

Etimologically, however, sornione becomes akin to whisper and leads to saturnione, an augmentative of Saturn; the same French adjective saturnin means "gloomy and melancholic."

Saturn, in any case, is the planet that does not give light, in opposition to Jupiter (hence the term jovial); sorgner (from sorne, night) is "to retreat in a corner, in a dark place."

Sornione thus encompassed, in a single word, my adolescent idea of the Moondog Jr.

When "Love 609" starts, it's enough to close your eyes to find yourself in the middle of a village festival; at the end of the main street, in the great hustle and bustle of sellers of nougat, hazelnuts and derivatives, a group of fearless contestants awaits their turn, gathered at the foot of a greasy pole. Looking closely, there's also a crowd further on, near a stage set up at the last minute. You place your bet, waiting to understand what the prize is.

With "Moondance" begins a journey of decidedly twilight tones, whose common denominator, at a structural level, is a certain type of blues. It almost feels like we are being introduced to the characters of a story, although the focus ends up concentrating on one of them in particular: the one who came with the rain, leaving the moon behind. Jintro Sarto is the wizard who invites us to discover a magnificent labyrinth of sounds: the trouble is that we really let ourselves go, perhaps deluded to have found the square of the circle (Moon or Rain dogs, after all, they are still dogs), until - the dances of "Cachita" starting - it's too late to go back. They are bitter tales, to be honest... And, if "Waiting 'till You're Gone" already has the flavor of early assessments, "Tv song" sounds just like a mockery.

Before the great fashion of "post-rock" invaded the late 90s musical landscape with its sometimes overwhelming complexity (and there were not few who risked expelling it, ideally, outside the 'chamber pot), Stef Kamil Carlens' Moondog Jr. proposed their very personal idea of a soundtrack; an idea perhaps not yet manifest but revealed shortly after, when - changing the name to Zita Swoon - they dared to even unsettle good Murnau, by setting to music (not coincidentally, given the precedent) his "Sunrise."

Homogeneous album only on an inspirational level, "Everyday...", more than a collection of songs,  is a minimal art gallery, an excellent wild stew, a collection of drafts (fortunately) never finished. An unknown masterpiece that, at times, seems to deny itself to its author's own control, such is the delicate elusiveness of its images ("Francis").

The classic 15-copy album, indeed.