The Shadow Line
I Giorni dell'Idrogeno

They arrive at the second album, which by caparezzian definition is "always the most difficult in an artist's career," the Shadow Line, a quartet from Rome, presenting their new work titled "I Giorni dell'Idrogeno", a peculiar album in various aspects.

Peculiar first of all because, although the tracklist contains only 8 songs, the CD lasts over 40 minutes: doing the math, this means that the average song is just over 5 minutes per track. Certainly a daring choice for a band that moves musically in a range that varies from new wave to pop where the dogma of radio play reigns: chorus in the first minute and a forced closure at three and a half minutes, no matter what happens. Instead, the Shadow Line immediately breaks the rules (La vita sognata, the first track and calling card of the band, presents a truly non-trivial structure for its five and a half minute duration), supported above all by an enviable compositional maturity (verses and riffs reminiscent of the Manic Street Preachers, variations akin to the Radiohead) and a certain flair for arrangements (sometimes seasoned with electronic patterns or synths, piano parts, and layered vocals) that turn out to be fascinating, dizzying, and never predictable (again see Radiohead during the The Bends era).

Unusual because for a band tackling a work in its own language for the first time (as has happened this year for other indie artists like The Death of Anna Karina or the Gazebo Penguins), the risk of disappointing with the lyric writing is extremely high: instead, songs like Settembre, Regole di Ingaggio or L'estate in un Giorno show the quality of possessing lyrics endowed with empathy with the listener, concrete and current, managing to combine social criticism and everyday life (and an underlying melancholia, a spleen at the base) with romanticism, disillusionment, and the impression that seasons slip under your nose while remaining a little caught in between, halfway between dreaming and fighting. A sort of sequel (speaking of content), a sequel ten years later to what was the "Sussidiario illustrato della giovinezza" by the Baustelle: in this case, it's not about episodes of a turbulent adolescence (as was the case for the Sussidiario), but about scenarios familiar to thirty-year-olds of these tens: you cannot remain indifferent to lyrics that grab you in such an intimate manner.

"I giorni dell'idrogeno" is a serpent nestled in Italian indie pop, with a "disturbing" drift towards an alternative scene: new, current, and concrete in content on par with works by Ministri, musically solid and convincing, urgent in its way of being desperate and dreaming at the same time.