Pinguini Tattici Nucleari
Gioventù Brucata

“Uno, Bue, Re, Gatto”!

That's how they marked time in “Bagatelle”, a track from the first album (“Il Re è Nudo” from 2014), and that's how I begin my review of the third album by “Pinguini Tattici Nucleari”, a Lombard band, specifically from Bergamo, born in 2010 and composed of Riccardo Zanotti (vocals, guitar), Nicola Buttafuoco (guitar), Lorenzo Pasini (guitar), Simone Pagani (bass), Matteo Locati (drums), Elio Biffi (keyboards, accordion), and Marco Ravelli in production.

The group's name translates to the beer “Tactical Nuclear Penguin”, a Scottish beer with a 32% alcohol content, holding the record as the “strongest” beer in the world.

A silly group? Partially, yes.

A rock group? Quite.

A pop group? Yes, come on.

A prog group? In this “Gioventù Brucata”, also!

In my opinion, the PNT are one of the best realities in the Italian scene. They excel in brilliant lyrics, in terms of metrics, artistic-social references, lexicon, creativity, and the ability to tell a story when they want to, as well as talking about nothing, when they stay playful, but always with a perfectly functional taste integrated into the selected musical container.

At the moment when E.e.L.S.T. say enough with their last tour in this 2018, whoever is a fan of Stefano Belisari's group, who appreciates them, who knows them marginally, who doesn't detest them, has the moral-musical obligation to listen to this album and see “how's it going, how's it going? all okay, all okay!” with these guys here (please, someone catch this trashy quote!).

With this third work, they summarize and expand on the concepts expressed in the first two albums, finding the perfect balance with irony without falling into shallowness, between musical quotations and a perfectly measured demonstration of technical skills, vaguely implied and contained in previous works.

I preface this and delve into the composition.

For work, I deal daily with boys and girls, I started with the boys from the '83 year, while now I deal with 2006s. Whatever one wants to say about it, even if one often wants to find the positive side in the ephemeral, and even if generalization should not be tautology, things have changed a lot under a multitude of educational and cultural references. I take the risk of confiding in you that, from my experience, in terms of human relationships, they have definitely changed for the worse.

“Gioventù brucata” is a generalizing, exemplary, and generational manifesto, “Your grandparents burned youth / Your fathers holed youth and you / Grazed youth”. With a simple play on words, it manages to brand these fashionable sheep to this current descendant of sheep... ahem of boys and girls. Examples are given (Sundays at Ikea, the concept of the eternal dream in the drawer, listening to Coldplay in association with a melancholic state, etc.) to identify the bustling flock in which the ex-friend and partner, betrayers of the protagonist, are also placed: “I once had a friend / And a woman to die for / Now the grazed youth / Has taken them in its fold... / And now I count on them at night / Otherwise I can't sleep”.

The guitar arpeggio takes shape with Zanotti's voice in “Irene”, a compelling ballad, seemingly fun, yet melancholic (“The future I could give you I've / Bartered for the vinyls in the attic / I'll give them to you when you’ve lost hope / And you feel defeated”), cynically realistic (“The songwriters say what matters / Is not how many times you fall, but if you have the courage to get back up / But after a thousand scorching falls / We have nothing left but to learn to live like snakes”), at times raw (“In this pitch-black night, which maybe was tomato black / My Red Brigade hands caress you, who are Aldo Moro”), which pokes a little fun at itself, softening in a garishly blues-style, a cappella finale.

In the first verse, a declaration of love is expressed that A musician could make to ANOTHER musician, cementing their love for the rest of life, namely “You were for me the third of the chord / The most important note that decided the fate / Of my empty days”. This is “Tetris”, a love song, surely popular, that manages to fit in the same verse the nerdy and genius phrase “You were for me the awareness / That with the help of time, even a Magikarp is able / to become Gyarados” and not obvious literary references like “You were for me the absence for Bresson / The bullfight for Hemingway / The revolution for Danton / The whistle of the train for Belluca”.

We turn the page with a glaring fusion moment in the concluing “Concorso musicale”, a doo-wop/swing structure, bossa nova and drone (!!!) citations, and the brief but piercing interventions of Lorenzo Pasini on the electric guitar to conclude the work, but with “79” (the story of a graduation exam in reggae-pop style), “Pula” (absolutely to be considered a prog rock track with a narrating voice) and the very twisted “Gigi cinque ottavi”, there were already interesting genre cues.

With “Gigi cinque ottavi” (vague references to “Jimmy the pedophile” and “Cateto”) and “Ninnananna for inattentive parents”, a minute and a half of nursery rhyme (with a critique of today's parents), a guitar reference to Battiato (“Voglio vederti danzare”), a lovely explicit disquisition on chicks and sex in quantity, to close with adolescent verses and the rambling intro of “Smoke on the Water”, you can glimpse three distinctive traits of what were the Elio e le Storie Tese pre-“Arrivedorci”, namely certified musical ability, fantasy, and the ability to narrate with the “forbidden to take oneself seriously” as a diktat.

Overall, the album tracks are 12 with “Montanelli (Intro)”, “Sciare”, a funny first single, “L'uomo che inventò il fuoco” and the interlude “Senti che cantare questi!”, for just over 50' of music.

Michael Burry revealed the financial bubble taking the trouble of risking, betting against subprime mortgages, and earning for himself and his next ten generations, Alexander the Great revealed himself as a military genius, risking his men and his own life, winning the battle of Gaugamela thanks to the unbeatable phalanx armed with sarisses, Isaiah Austin took the risk of playing the March Madness despite Marfan syndrome to take Baylor to the finals, managing to, but having to abandon his career before entering the NBA.

My risk is infinitely smaller and is that of presenting these guys to you with five stars, while the PTN, through Musicraiser, asked their fans/listeners to dare and contribute in the realization of this album, and in my opinion, the risk has been perfectly amortized!

…

"Hello Mr. Mike, good morning!"

“Good morning Lucia, how are you?"

“Pretty well”

“Is your husband well?”

“No, thank heaven, my husband is no longer here, he's gone to heaven”

“Ahhh and he's better off than us, so he's well, I was right"

"Eh, unfortunately yes"