ECLECTICISM AND GENIUS: THE 2nd LAW

The world’s losing its energy, we are losing our energy.. and how can we defeat this huge economic world crisis? This is where the title of the upcoming Muse’s album, The 2^nd Law, comes from, referring especially to the second principle of thermodynamics. The main theme, as Mattew Bellamy’s pointed out in an interview for the Italian magazine XL, is the struggle. But, after the trailer and the two singles released on the market (Survival and Madness), I really didn’t know what to expect. It all got very confusing…  Because that is just the main theme… there are many actually… from the love for your girlfriend (Madness)to your wish to protect your new born baby (Follow Me), from the importance of your family (Save Me) to more political songs (Animals). All is mixed up with many music genres: not only do they use usual Rock’n’Roll stuff (guitar, bass and drums), but they involve as well classical instruments as strings (Rodrigo D’Erasmo from Afterhours is actually playing the violin in two tracks, Survival and Explorers), electronic music, dub step and funky influence. For example, Panic Station... it sounds so funky and so 80s I couldn’t help moving and dancing while listening to it! I actually asked myself who I was listening to… Skrillex? Queen? Primus? But from the massive start of the opening track, Supremacy, dominated by Matt’s guitar and Dom’s drums, I recognized the Great Muse’s sound. Yes, Great! Because this album sounds like something epic, like Unsustainable… it’s even unsettling!

It’s a really eclectic album, co-produced by the Italian producer Tommaso Colliva, which (surprise!) features a couple of songs written and sung by bassist Chris after his recover from alcoholism and personal problems, Save Me and Liquid State.

I MUST run and buy it in October!

PS: The preview of The 2^nd Law is still available on La Repubblica website still for a few hours, I guess!  But it DESERVES to be listened to…

VINICIO CAPOSSELA: STORIES FROM THE SEA AND A CONCERT FOR VENICE

It was under the starry sky, the moon shyly showing itself upon the green cypresses of San Giorgio Island (Venice), that Vinicio Capossela, Italian singer and songwriter with a certain poetic vein, chose to set up his special concert for Venice, Ballate nella barena- ombre, oriente e caìgo, Friday 7^th September 2012. The theater is romantically facing on the Venetian lagoon, against which the stage was built. A dark stage actually, lightened only by few small yellow lamps, the city lights visible on the background through the trees. The concert opened with the chorus from Il Grande Leviatano (from Marinai, Profeti e Balene, La Cupa/Warner, 2011) followed by some quotations from Melville, Conrad and Ruskin, passionately read by Capossela, who revealed the concert's theme: stories from the sea, stories of sailormen. Thus, a sailor hat on top of his head, he sang his Venice (the city of Marco Polo, the Ghetto, the city that was once the bridge between the East and the West) through some of his best songs.

He also paid homage to Noodles, character from Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, Homer’s and Dante’s Ulysses. On the stage, a special guest, Manolis Pappos (who features also in Capossela’s latest album Rebetiko Gymnastas -La Cupa/ Warner, 2012-), talented bouzouki player, Alessandro Stefana (guitar), Dimitri Sillato (violin), Glauco Zuppiroli (double-bass) along with Vincenzo Vasi (vocals, therenim, sampler). As he has done in Rebetiko Gymnastas, Capossela revisited some of his songs in a rebetiko key (a genre of Greek music, he said, that ‘does not fear the pain, so that its main instrument, bouzouki, has the shape of a tear’), playing the piano and the shofar as well as entertaining people with a whale-shaped barrel organ. He performed songs such as Polpod’Amor or Pryntyl, taking even the chance to criticize the Italian political class. Finally, when all seemed to come to an end, he decided that he wanted  to go on and die at his piano. So he gave the public some more love songs until the lights were turned off. ‘Vinicio, Che coss’è l’amor!’ (‘What’s love!’) someone shouted from his seat. “Ah, if I knew that…”, Capossela answered back.

Then it was dark again, only the moonlight showing our way home.

Nothing to do with The Who… Just some upcoming albums to be kept an eye on…

SEPTEMBER 2012

-10^th : The Raveonettes, The Observator

-11^th: Bob Dylan, Tempest

-11^th: David Byrne and ST. Vincent, Love This Giant

-25^th: Green Day, ¡UNO!

OCTOBER 2012

-2^nd: Muse, The 2^nd Law

-15^th : Kiss, Monster (UK)

-15^th: Iron Maiden, a limited edition of vinyl picture disc albums of the band’s first eight albums (by EMI and UME)

-16^th Kiss, Monster (USA)

NOVEMBER 2012

-3^rd: Green Day, ¡DOS!

-6^th: Aerosmith, Music From Another Dimension!

JANUARY 2013

-13^th: Green Day, ¡TRÉ!

IS IT JUST A KIND OF MADNESS?

Little women grow up. And little lords too. They travel all around the world, discover many things they didn’t know when they used to live in their small town somewhere in the English countryside and experience lots of things. Even becoming father to a baby boy. And they try to transfer their brand new experiences into their jobs, music, whatever. So sometimes they come up with such unexpected results that I wonder “Have they completely changed their mind? Don’t they like sex and drugs and rock&roll anymore?” These were my immediate thoughts when I first listened to Madness a couple of weeks ago, second single from the forthcoming Muse album, The 2^nd Law (which is due in October 2^nd, by the way). I had this kind of impression:                         ________________________________________________________________

Flatness… no drums… electronic music… A big turn for a band that claims itself to become the biggest rock band of all ages… bigger than The Rolling Stones, I guess…

Still, from minute 2.40 I found myself thinking: “Oh! Here they are! The Muse I’ve been known for so many years!”

I actually needed to listen to Madness (written by Matthew Bellamy, it seems, after an argument  with his fiancée, Kate Hudson) some 10-20 times more than usual to understand if I liked it or not. And I still don’t get if I like it… But, BUT, I actually can understand the feelings of The Distillers’ fans when Brody Dalle came out with Ghetto Love (which I like, by the way…) with her brand new group, Spinnerette, some years ago.

Except for the fact that (I quote one friend of mine) ‘Matthew Bellamy’s voice can make the dead come to life again!’ (But, please, do not think she’s got a man crush on him…).

Needless to say, I’ve been thunderstruck.

Should I have expected it from The 2nd Law trailer? Probably. Or, MORE probably, it’s just one of Matt’s big jokes, as he tells the Italian magazine XL: it actually seems that just a couple of songs are this tacky electronic. For the rest, good old Muse.

Can’t wait for the new album to be released!