Yes! Boom! Voilà!: a rock record can still be political

Yes, in Italy a rock record can still be political. Not militant or ideological, in that case it would smell like mothballs, but political in the sense of being able to zoom in on the distortions of today in an intelligent way. Attacking the dictatorship of numbers, talking about personal crises and loneliness, the media pillory, the truncheons that break backs while “journalists emphasize the records”: the first album of the supergroup Si! Boom! Voila! hits the target with a bazooka and does so, as one of the images in their visual story suggests, with a toothless grin. Abroad, this dramatically ironic, urgent and disturbing attitude has never gone away – successful bands like the Idlesone of the references of Si! Boom! Voila! – in Italy, however, this critical exercise has long been increasingly nuancedeven in rock, but fortunately there are those who, like a crazy satellite, it still wants to send different messagesnot anesthetized.

I Yes! Boom! Voila! I am NAIPor Michelangelo Mercuri, who some will remember as an X Factor competitor in 2020, Giulio Ragno Faveroguitarist and producer of the Teatro degli Orrori, Davide Lasalaguitarist, producer and founder of Edac Studio, Roberta Sammarelliformer bassist of Verdena, e Julie Antthat is Giulia Formica, drummer in various groups including Baustelle. Five excellent artists and musicians (here is their first tour together) which, to find a balance, create an imbalance: the eleven songs on the album are imbued with an instinctive noise punk and rock a la Shellac and Hüsker Düthere are boyish and aggressive influences to the Moldy Peachesthe pieces often, within a few minutes, change sound like the skin of reptiles and they are rich in irreverent and ferocious images and language. A world in half between John Lydon in PIL version and Lucio Dallathe latter mentioned indirectly in “Voilà!”, where the liberating and masturbatory hand of “Desperate erotic stomp” has as its backdrop the return of gloomy and nefarious figures. You can feel Favero’s hand a lot: in several moments the sound and the recited-sung of NAIP they clearly recall the Theater of Horrors.

Entrance is a business card: “Living like this (can’t be done anymore)” It seems like a joke, but instead it’s a slap. “Santi numeri” is the hardcore side of the projecta dark and religious exorcism of the power of numbers, even in music: “They’re coming, you can feel them too, there are so many of them, a sold out army!”. “Pinocchio” is a wild fragment and contains one of the passages that explains the mood of the album: “Only by laughing am I elevating myself beyond the beast”phrase taken from a poem by Paul Klee. “Works in progress” it is more suspended, more reflective, a glimmer of light: it breaks the wall of sound and lets a little light filter onto the feelings. “Gogna Ragazzi Gogna” is a blast: playing on “Sogna Ragazzi Sogna” by Roberto Vecchioniilluminates the gray areas of a fame that can be turned on and off like a switch. Then “A piece of the Swans” cleverly exploits the insistent rock of the New York band, another point of reference, to hammer home some concepts. “Sale at the End of Everything” is about selling yourself for successof selling everything, even God, and with the final “From zero”, in which Roberta singsa bruised lullaby with an instrumental coda, the curtain closes. And, as in a magic trick, a journey takes place between illusions and disillusions, on the roller coaster of a rock that speaks to the stomach and the brain. In short, a magic for these empty times: Yes! Boom! Voila!.