The Smile
Live @ Piazza Trento e Trieste, Ferrara - 15 luglio 2022

LA RECENSIONE

The alarm at dawn. A train, another one, then yet another. Through a scorching Ferrara, I reach the hotel, giving myself a moment of respite. At 6 PM, I'm in line, imagining the love story with the Radiohead that everyone around me has (everyone thinks they are unique in their listening to a band, and perhaps they are). At 7:30 PM, they let us in, a mad dash along Piazza Trento e Trieste to get the best spots. I'm in the front row, center stage. More hours of waiting, at 8:30, a crazy bewildered guy plays, then silence again.

When they come on stage, so close, I almost don't know what to do. Just watch them, dance, make videos. It makes me think about how many emotions I've invested in them (in the different formations), how much time and adolescent longing, how much admiration as an adult man. The effort to reach them in Ferrara is just the latest in twenty years of dedication. And I find myself asking why: is there a reason why so many people squeeze into a square, cramped and sweaty, to watch and listen to that gray-haired man?

It's as if every gesture, every guitar note, those words uttered in Oxford English of which we understand very little, are all symbolic gestures. A rite that has its own specific sense in its repeated occurrence, a mass that does not promise eternal salvation but earthly redemption. Redemption is imagined in each one's heart, in the ecstasy of seeing those usually abstract traveling music pieces become flesh, in the thoughts of our days, all the same or different. Redemption lies in the anticipation of the cathartic moment, in its arduous approach, and in the indelible memory, the fetishes, the gadgets, the t-shirt, and the record.

A self-sustaining rite. In the beautiful 26-year-old girl elbowing next to me who knows little of rock, in the mature man clinging to the barrier, narrating fantastically the grunge era. Each person follows their story, more or less detailed and dense, but they all intertwine their lives for a couple of hours in this beautiful square. It doesn't matter much what is played, what matters is what came before and paved the way.

The band has just one album and plays almost all of it, really well. They also play some unreleased tracks that are making a name for themselves. Compared to the "mother" group, there's less history, beauty has had little time to mature, and thus the yearning can't be the same. It is a sowing, so much new music to return in the future and tell us: we are the ones who made you feel with Free in the Knowledge.

But there's a lot of rock, a lot of talent, and songs played divinely (Greenwood is an alien seducing us with his notes), a singer who seems to perform his pieces. There's no routine, or at least, Yorke knows how to hide it. As if that were his only concert of the summer, as if we were his chosen audience, as if he had written those phrases just for us, for me.