Zen Circus
Nati Per Subire

I have always wondered what might drive someone from Pisa to live in Livorno. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that old Livornese saying that goes "better a dead person in the house than a Pisano at the doorstep." There you go. Andrea Appino, the voice and guitar of Zen Circus, decided a few years ago to settle in this city so hostile towards his fellow countrymen. Appino has always been quite a provocative type and has done everything to be discriminated against. When he went to school in the early '90s, he dressed in tight pants from his mother's wardrobe, getting teased and considered a loser (and even gay). One day, upon exiting the technical institute, he found that someone had engraved on his scooter with keys N.P.S. -Nato Per Subire- (Born To Endure).

The new Zen Circus album is aptly titled so, Nati Per Subire, and is the direct continuation of the previous "Andate Tutti Affanculo". Here, among a citation of Skiantos (In the country that looks like a shoe) and a cameo by Giorgio Canali in "La democrazia semplicemente non funziona" (Democracy Just Doesn't Work), there is a pervasive sense of impotence condensed into eleven dramas of sick and resigned daily life.

Zen spares absolutely no one, from the cocaine-addicted family man to the exploited Romanian worker living far from family, moving on to themselves (with all of us), children of a society now left to its own devices.

In this album, the second sung entirely in Italian from their discography, the acoustic guitar is somewhat set aside in favor of more electric and fast-paced tracks. The arrangements and lyrics are much more refined, but they lose the immediacy typical of their previous records. Lastly, there's no lack of irony, a fundamental feature of their other works as well, just look at the quotes in "I qualunquisti", where an absolutely twisted Gandhi gets to proclaim -vincere e vinceremo! (win and we will win!)-

Who knows if in the future Appino will choose to remain in Livorno or move to some other city. Certainly, though, he has understood that by constantly putting himself out there, he ends up writing a great album capable of fully describing the times we are living in. And that tight pants eventually come back into fashion.