Savages
Silence Yourself

There are stories that appear on the scene, unfold according to their script, and then hurry to fade away behind the scenes. Other stories, however, shelter only for a moment from the spotlight. Along the corridors of the theater and then onto the asphalt of the street, they dress in the rawest meanings and sensations until they preserve the scent on the fabric of what needs to be told: then they are ready—once again to explode in front of the audience, in a symbolic representation that is violence and has the taste of an awaited catharsis.

Is it too much for a young band like the four Savages of Silence Yourself? Perhaps, but we are talking about stories. And the story that Jehnny Beth's group has in store for us has the stigmata of tales that explode like lightning and soon pass like storms—but then return with the new sun. It’s post-punk, baby, it’s the cauldron heated by the embers of Thatcher's England and even embraced in the Tuscany-shaped Siberia by Diaframma and the early Litfiba. It’s post-punk, which sweeps away experimentalism and brings the canon back to the center of the stage: the declarations à la Souxsie of Husbands, the recursive riff of She Will, the individual cry of Shut Up. Yes, because in the age of smartphones—ever more a technological extension of the all-too-human anxiety of chatter—one really feels the need to stay a bit quiet. Silence Yourself, please: perhaps by putting on the good old records of the past, to begin to be stung again by the ideas of a more laconic and—perhaps—more sincere era. Mission accomplished, we anticipate.

In the Savages’ debut, there is the darkness of Ian Curtis's Joy Division, the song structure of the early Pere Ubu, and a rhythm section that recalls the later Gang Of Four. Yet we are not talking about epigones (who said Editors?). The Savages, straight from the electronic and hip-hungry London of the '10s, play their trump card by seeking a hidden face behind the edges of the post-punk polygon: finding right there the delightful taste of small inventions within the guitar loop and the unexpected tempo changes. Sometimes even an entire choir of screeching metals and voices asking for another redemption. The one that—at the end of Silence Yourself—surprises us applauding the bare bodies of the Savages, cleansed of their story that comes and goes, and that will certainly make a reappearance at our favorite theater. Meanwhile, the scent of what they intended to tell us has reached our coats and overcoats, to accompany us on the way home.