Timoria
1999

1999 means an album. 1999 means a year of rupture. 1999 signifies the beginning of the end.

The words we can spend about this album, a sad effigy of a troubled period, are bitter and disordered words. Like after every divorce, after the end of every story, the words that are spent are confused words born out of a moment of less clarity. The process of attributing causes and blame is a useless distraction, there are neither saints nor winners nor guilty parties; in any case, we are only losers. We've lost the years, the work done together, the shared history, the desire not to be, like others, destined to perish.

Timoria, with their best work “Viaggio senza vento” were until that harmless year considered as one of the most dignified representations of Italian rock. More famous in today's chronicles, but no longer for the love of notes, at the end of the last decade, Francesco Renga, recognizable, powerful, charged, and suitable voice for Timoria's dry rock, decides to leave the group, following disagreements and discord with the mind, the hidden leader of the group, Omar Pedrini. Timoria's followers, a narrow but solid group of enthusiasts, saw a team shatter, one that had always given the idea and preached a journey on the same “ship”; a group still in good shape, as shown by their latest work “2020 speedball”.

My words on this matter are words imbued with fading adolescence, personal sadness, confusion in writing about a divorce, about someone else's story. About this first album after Renga (or, perhaps, Pedrini's first solo?), I could say many confused, contrasting things, and for this reason, I believe it is better to entrust the presentation of the contradictions to a clear dialogue with myself.

ME: Hi Self, long time no see, what are you doing here?

SELF: I was passing by to grab a sandwich, I really don’t have time for dinner today… tonight I'm going to Brixia Arena to hear Timoria!

ME: To hear Timoria?!? Are you serious? Look, those guys without Renga are finished, I've heard the latest album, 1999, it’s a disgraceful piece vocally. Pedrini was and is a precise guitarist, but with that tremulous and strained little voice! Also, the other voice, Sasha, doesn’t convince me much! Come on, be serious and spend your money better!

SELF: Firstly, who asked for your opinion. Secondly, I listened to the album, and it’s not bad. Thirdly, Renga's “departure” leaves a heavy legacy, sure, but Pedrini, without Renga, has changed his way of writing, expressing himself, increasingly directing his work towards the Italian Beat tradition, towards a choral song, towards many pleasant falsettos. Today, Timoria’s rock is more varied and melodic. Sure, Omar leaves many followers perplexed by certain unusual interpretations, but undoubtedly he deserves credit for continuing a journey already partly begun, perfecting and expanding it. An ambitious journey Pedrini wants as an eclectic artist, a journey through art, literary readings, beat ethics, and Italian rock. Furthermore, he has also proven to be a suitable voice for this new style, a suffered, more expressive voice.

ME: Great, then, to sum up… Pedrini is today, singer, author, multi-instrumentalist, director, and producer (of wines too, I've been told..) and leaves Timoria with only the crumbs: a group that fades into the leader’s shadow, becoming a generic support band, precise and anonymous. I think, in that album, the discomfort of the rest of the group over Omar's choices is palpable! Moreover, calling an author eclectic just because he encloses the group in Marco Lodola's atelier and involves some big names in his hippies’ restoration, is at least quirky! Then tell me, do we also have a Beat tradition in Italy?

SELF: Of course, starting from the voices, the album sounds sad and anguished; voices and choirs express a real sense of stifled disillusionment, of sunset, of fragility, of little hope in one's abilities, but this is why it results in a compact and recognizable work.

ME: Frankly, I don’t know what to tell you, after a couple of listens I have a lot of confusion in my head, the sensation is of fading into an anesthetic galaxy, out of time, at the crossroad. Sad boys from the ’70s walking towards cyberspace, encountering, suspended in air, characters from the last century, poets and street singers, vagabond minstrels, disillusioned intellectuals, but also charlatans of our time, fashionable characters, urban life teachers, and dormant dragons. Maybe you're right, dear Self, but I only know that before I used to like them and now I don’t anymore, it may not be scientific but music is also skin, impact, nerve!

SELF: Come on, some tracks aren’t bad at all and have nothing to envy from past productions: “Deserto” opens the album in search of an answer, it’s a song of doubt, of reconsideration, not trivial, the sound is that of DOC, the guitars are heavy as is the group’s counter-singing. “Ora e per sempre” is the Pop song Omar had in the strings for a while and it’s enjoyable to listen to. “È così facile” could be an autobiographical reflection of the group and it’s certainly a tribute to Italian Beat production. “Un volo splendido” is a plastic rock, infused with British sounds that however can be appreciated for the good instrumental crescendo. I found particular and evident also “L’amore è un drago dormiente” whose lyrics, entrusted to Aldo Busi, reveal a contemplative moment, towards mysticism and the ethnic.

ME: The Beat tradition is only in your mind, the mystical and ethnic, offered in that way, are souvenir shop stuff, “Ora e per sempre”, it’s the Pop song Omar had in him for a while that marks a definitive detachment from previous productions and from the previous formation; a formation that, although 80% present, already seems to rest in peace. Furthermore, the key elements of this work are already laid out in the first four tracks, the following pieces will follow the same styles and themes without the slightest variation or nuance.

SELF: Well, you overlook the admirable “Genova”, a demonstration of the good songwriting that can come out of Pedrini's pen. An atmospheric song, of landscape, of a winter landscape, a cold and heartbreaking frame for the hearts of lovers at farewell. It’s worth the price of the entire album.

ME: Instead, I just couldn’t overlook the embarrassing “Il maestro”, an attempt at RAPcore, always the same and without a dimension within an album of a completely different nature. But Pedrini has been insisting on it for a while, similar events have belonged to a more distant past.

SELF: It’s necessary to appreciate Pedrini, an ambitious artist in every field! An artist must have a bit of ambition! It’s necessary for him to do things with the right consideration, with the passion, intensity, and skill that also characterize this album. However, ideas cannot always be the right ones.

ME: Ah! Do whatever you believe, spend your money on their records and concerts, then tell me... I bet, one day or another, you’ll hear them sing… “le tue mutandine che mi fanno morire, pane, burro e medicine...” and perhaps, they won't be the worst things...

SELF: I will, actually, I’d better go now, I don’t want to miss this event, made even more enticing by this healthy discussion. Me, you're always a reference point!

ME: The Same goes for Me, let me know, will you!

In the end, I’ll tell YOU, that concert was actually great. Our two bar talkers have helped me externalize, if not all, at least the main perplexities regarding this work. An album that, in the end, is a bit plastic but with a defined character and lays the foundations for subsequent works like El Topo Grand Hotel and Un Aldo Qualunque sul Treno Magico, rich with ethnic/mystical suggestions and the '70s musical research, perfectly traceable in the tracks of 1999. Timoria fades away, Omar Pedrini remains, a guy who in 1999 has the right aspirations to do something potentially innovative but that time will tell will follow other and safer paths.