The roots of Utopia 239 date back to 1971 when in a village of the
province of Vercelli called Lignana four friends formed a band to
play covers and compose original stuff inspired by Italian canzone
d’autore and progressive rock bands such as Pink Floyd or Le
Orme. During their early years the band never had the chance to
properly record and release an album and they split up at the end of
the seventies. It wasn’t until 2002 that some of the old members
reunited and decided to rework on their early repertoire taking it
back from oblivion. In 2015 they finally self-released a debut album
entitled I giorni dell’utopia (The days of Utopia) with a
renewed line up featuring along with the veterans Massimo Cagliero
(guitar, keyboards, vocals), Ugo Giva Magnetti (guitar, vocals) and
Fausto Garella (drums, percussion, vocals) also Fabrizio Gallina
Sabarino (keyboards, synth), Enrico Barbano (electric and classical
guitar), Fosca Zanone (vocals, classical guitar) and Alberto Bocchio
(bass).
The opener “Ouverture” is a short, ethereal instrumental track
with the keyboards in the forefront that sets the atmosphere and
leads to “Una borgata” (A township), a piece originally written
in 1972 that tells about the formative years spent by a man in an old
village between flowers and thorns with a mill, a church, an old inn
and where memories are carried away by the wind... The pace is slow
and the mood melancholic as the music and the poetical lyrics
describe a little town and its hypocritical mentality, then the
strong desire of looking for new horizons, leaving behind faded
masks, broken dreams and false appearances. The following “Un
povero cristo” (A poor man) is a short ballad that was clearly
inspired by the style of Fabrizio De Andrè and Francesco Guccini and
depicts the lonesome death, in a hospital bed, of an old poor
villager. Then, the images of his funeral follow: few people, no
flowers, no tears... Life goes on as usual as the memory of the
solitary fades away.
“Ho udito le megattere cantare” (I’ve heard the humpback whales
singing) is a long instrumental track that could recall One Of
These Days by Pink Floyd and leads to “9 febbraio, un giorno”
(February the 9th, a day), a sad elegy that evokes broken illusions
and the blood splattered on the asphalt as a consequence of an
accident at work on a normal day in an impersonal, ungrateful
metropolis that seems unaware of this kind of tragedies... Then it’s
the turn of the long, complex “Il narratore delle storie degli
inferi” (The teller of the hell’s stories) a dramatic piece
dealing the issue of drug addiction where the lyrics unfold in the
form of a dialogue between a “right-thinking” narrator and a
damned junky drawn away across the dark infinite space by the white
dust he holds in his hands...
The short instrumental “La danza delle lucciole” (The dance of
the fireflies) is a dreamy track that leads to the dramatic “Amore
fragile” (Fragile love), a melancholic ballad about the first love
and the loss of innocence. Then it’s the turn of the introspective,
hermetic “Il bivio” (The crossroads) that tells about the torn
choices a teenager girl has to make, uncertain about which way to
follow between dreams and stability, dangerous paths or beaten
tracks...
According to the band, “Gloria in excelsis machina (Il confine)”
is a piece conceived as a hymn to the human decadence. It
tries to depict in music and words a dystopic future where, without
the ability to experience or express feelings, humankind is pushed to
the edges of the galaxies. Man is now the prisoner of a cage that he
has built with his own hands, a cage that he will no longer be able
to break down as his life plunges towards extinction on board of
ghost spaceships lost into the mists of Andromeda... The following
“Ritorno alle origini” (Back to the roots) is another track that
tries to conjure up apocalyptic images and deals with the tendency to
self-destruction of the human race. You can hear Mother’s nature
lament in the day after of a nuclear war. There’s nothing but ruin
all around the gloomy landscape. And yet, there’s still hope for a
new start as a pale light breaks the veil of darkness...
“Risveglio” is a short instrumental linked to the final track,
“La morte e la fanciulla” (The Death and the maiden), that tells
in a poetical way of the tragic death of a young girl. The girl is
raped and murdered by a maniac killer, her body is found the day
after in a suburban lawn. Here reality and dream melt and what is
just another tragic crime news becomes a fairy tale...
On the whole, an interesting album although it could be difficult to
fully appreciate it without an adequate comprehension of the lyrics.
You can listen to the complete album HERE
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