The Fireman
Electric Arguments

Undoubtedly, this leap from 2008 to 2009 certainly hasn't witnessed any musical works worthy of particular note.

Well... it's an optimistic phrase, almost an euphemism turned into a sentence.

In reality, it's only the gigantic passion we feel for instruments and the seven notes that can lead us to believe that the world of so-called light music still has something real to offer.

Cobain allegedly killed himself after saying that guitar strings are six, and you can't pull much more out of them. Or something like that... essentially, that was the concept, and it wasn't entirely wrong.

The so-called light music, whether it's singer-songwriter stuff, rock, or pop, has "finite" canons within itself (in the sense of "not infinite"). It all originates from the blues and country, understood in an extremely broad sense (let's include everything from the great Neapolitan song to the Irish one, with consequent and now ancient invasions of the world) and after works like, for example, Waits' "Bone Machine", the paths of research, deconstruction, and reconstruction of the song form truly seem exhausted.

So it is certainly with a disenchanted eye, undoubtedly aggravated by age, that I can't see any personality in the little bands with high-pitched voices of "C-D-E-F-G"… or in the preening divas warbling on both sides of the Ocean, or in the guitars that are falsely and sadly distorted or in the drums that are all the same, coppery yet depersonalized.

Just as it doesn't thrill me to see illustrious unknowns, meteors already in departure, flaunting their names as if they were not a set of letters but the tablets of law.

Here instead there is a person whose name alone suffices, in itself, to automatically sell hundreds of thousands of copies of an album, however bad or useless it might be.

He is 65 years old. He makes a real album, original, felt. Perhaps not new (but, I repeat, there's nothing new anymore, and let's not give in to personal or generational crushes...: that's the way it is) but certainly a well-made album, coming straight from the soul and heart.

And he hides his illustrious name.

Considerable time has passed since he, mixing rock 'n roll, soul, country, and singer-songwriting, along with three friends who were also English, conquered the world.

Then he formed another group, and then he went solo. Many albums, some very beautiful, others that fill the shelf without giving or taking anything away. A lot of talent, a lot of professionalism, and a lot of seriousness.

Until this album which, only due to the pseudonym, will sell much less compared to the potential of the character, and which is instead full of truly beautiful things. Psychedelic, experimental atmospheres, alongside more traditional arpeggios and harmonies. Sketched lyrics and others that are well-crafted. Clean vocals alongside distorted voices. Nothing new but nothing banal. Above all, a work that takes into account, without arrogance, everything that has come before.

In short: the only non-banal album I've come across lately comes from a sixty-five-year-old.

A sixty-five-year-old who has made history in light music, and today, in the moment of the realization of Warhol's prediction of the quarter hour of fame for everyone, plays at hiding his name.

Simply making good music, with the right words. What he evidently was born to do.

And well done Macca, with all the envy and admiration I'm capable of.