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Rating: For all those who consider rock'n'roll not just one of many musical genres, but an urgency, an absolute and desperate need to communicate thoughts, experiences, emotions.
If anyone has been puzzled by the way Bruce Springsteen has, in recent years, treated his "Born in the U.S.A." by rendering it in a totally acoustic version, they will probably be even more amazed by the completely electric version that Spanish Johnny offers at the opening of their second episode.
It's a vitriolic version, all screaming electric guitars and harmonicas, placed at the beginning just to make things clear right away. They still "hide" behind fictitious names, yet they are Paolo "Santiago Lobo" Panteghini and Tommaso "Blu Dakota" Vezzoli on electric guitars, Enrico "Henry Dakota" on keyboards and accordion, Tommy "Geremiah Smith" Fusco on electric bass, Alessandro "Cletus Cobb" Ducoli who sings, plays harmonica and acoustic guitar, and writes almost all the songs, and James "O'Presley" Gelfi who plays the drums.
The album also features various guests, including Beppe Donadio on piano, Paolo Mazzardi (Impossiblues) on the Hammond, Veronica Sbergia (the SverOxa of Garage Toys) and Alessandra Cecala (the Cecca of Califugo Blues Band) on female voices and choirs. The album, after its blazing start, becomes slightly more introspective with "La mia cellula di guardia", where Cletus Cobb, with a filtered voice, claims the urgency of finding a safe place "in this galaxy of easy and mythical heroes".
"Just keeping" is a ballad with a touch of Waits, while "Morrison's ladies" is a rock'n'roll that talks about snakes, highways, wrecked cars on Vine, and "midnight women whose rooms are always open". Introspection returns with "Io personalmente", with a sort of personal confession in which Cobb states (and here I quote verbatim) that he "doesn't think anyone should give up standing up for the things each of us believes in".
Then there are the two tracks, in my opinion, the best of the album, namely "Wrong idea", which, no offense to Cobb, seems to me like a cross between a certain Dylan from "Modern Times" (and not just because of the vocal tone) and some old dusty dirty blues, and "Rino", which is a true, passionate dedication to Rino Gaetano, a piece that starts acoustically and calmly only to explode into guitar-driven rock with "Green On Red" accents. "Natale 1890" is also a great ballad that recalls a Christmas with soldiers and cannons passing by, hence a time of war. "La tua rivoluzione" is another rock ballad whose lyrics, in my interpretation, invite us to stop following certain people who claim to have the only right solutions to everything, and instead, to think with our own heads without delegating others to say what we think. I don't know if I made myself clear, but that's that.
The album concludes with "Assenza di tempo", still quite personal, and "R'n'r funeral", with an interesting female counterpoint and a beautiful final harmonica solo that closes this excellent second effort by the Johnnies who reappear, a year later, as a band whose live performances are true rock'n'roll happenings. Anyone curious to know where the music proposed by the Johnnies comes from should go see them, or take a tour on their website www.spanishjohnny.it.
You won't be disappointed.
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