My review: Loom - Unicorn

 

Loom - Unicorn

Ice petals turn the Swedish sky into a temple of depth: in a world where beauty becomes a distraction, a quick act, allowing oneself not to devote to the study of every form, the band from Kalmar, with their new song, gives us all the chance to reverse course. And with Fredrik Axelsson's lyrics, the whole thing comes across as compact, decisive, sensible and enlightening. The quintet flexes its muscles, but it's not just about strength: everything is encompassed by a melodic line that is only partially hidden by this sidereal flood of sounds and beams of light immersed in a sky that comes from the early nineties. A return to their origins, to the birth of the band, an impetus that shifts the temptation of decisive writing to render the listener harmless and instead leads them, together with the band, to visit the planets of an artistic mode capable of measuring the experience of loneliness despite the richness of the subject described in the lyrics. 

The band captures noise in pop form and conveys the melancholy of the fact that an unexpected marriage can flow through the grooves of these instruments, full of freshness and abstaining from any temptation to turn a song into an elegant but meaningless garment. So we find ourselves enveloped by British impulses from the indie rock of the band The Family Cat, from the shoegaze blazes of Ferment by Catherine Wheel, in a riot of splinters in which to hide Fredrik's singing, here skilful in delivering his words with almost modesty and respect at the same time, in an immense and perfectly structured glaciation. Roland's bass is the real drumming, the guide that allows everything to fall like a leaden weight on dreams. The guitars live through three distinct moments, modes and inclinations, bringing the succession of chords to become an epoch-making embrace. A song that moves, reveals and anaesthetises the imbecility of those who write songs only to enhance the contact between musicians and listeners. Instead, in these very minutes, we see the impossibility of touching the band, this composition, becoming spectators of the wounds of the female protagonist, as well as her interlocutor. 

Yet another example of a growing band, searching for itself, for a style, not a format, in order to be free to navigate life without false preconceptions. A true creation, true music, a melancholic painting that allows us to isolate ourselves with ourselves, a wave of sound like frost kissing the ice that descends from enchanting places...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld 

Salford

1-2-2026

https://loom2.bandcamp.com/track/unicorn

My Review: Dear Company - Scratches Ep

 Inglese

Dear Company  Scratches Ep

Absolute truth does not exist; it is a dramatic lie that lacks, for example, an adequate soundtrack highlighting the irrefutable seal of extremes.

Hence the need for discretion, for whispers, for tenderness, for details that break down impulses, for a method that completes the depth of a narrative intent that above all highlights the goodness of mistakes, losses, dreams full of lead and scratches, here the true protagonists of a magnetic story, materialised in a truly remarkable range of expression. 

This is not a true debut for the Roman duo composed of Elisa Pambianchi and Martino Cappelli: it reveals, instead, that the publication of artistic works has little to do with the actual timing of the whole, as this is a work that shows their lives, their paths, their references, a whole exposed to the sun, but nothing was born on the day when these six sound butterflies found us ready to welcome them. 

A story like a collection, like flowers blooming on rational and emotional ground that has skilfully condensed these compositions into an inevitable outpouring, in which introspection emerges decisively, silence painted with lightness so as not to compromise it, the dialectic of distant means (such as folk sounds immersed in light electronic music and dream pop impulses with ethereal veins), and a continuous feeling that respect for those who do not want to be too disturbed is always highlighted. Profound songs with a light soul, butterflies, in fact.

Life is represented through the effect of footsteps, with traces combed through drones, atmospheres, anxieties, forms of relaxation, the use of ambient music DNA capable of having the same depth as genres more accustomed to finding consensus, an internalisation that manifests itself truthfully, in which depth passes through slow rhythms and carefully crafted sounds, where prayer and hope are secular, domestic, private events. Disillusionment, as if by magic, becomes a force to be welcomed, sadness a daughter to be cherished, neurosis a starting point for shaping any wounds. 

A brilliant work, not suited to those looking for songs as anaesthetics: an immense work in terms of the cultural aspects it explores, with Elisa's skilful textual and dreamlike weaving and Martino's peculiar elaboration. The tension is mystical, mysterious, nourishing, a reservoir of users at the service of an inner journey. An EP that blends the human aspect with the artistic, independence that is not arrogance, caprice, conceit or misery, but a more mature way of making musical art an introspection that gives scratches, in fact, a positive role.

The images, so present in Martino's musical structures, are the algebraic clouds on which Elisa places her voice, rather than her verses. And this is where her singing style reveals itself to be impetuous, devastating, rich, true and concrete: she herself seems to have given her role a different meaning from that with 3+Dead, defining herself through careful breathing, minimalist vocalisations and the choice of words that are both abrasive and velvety, while her sensitivity remains intact.

In a collection of songs in which she is not always present, everything has more value, offering energy and an incredible and incurable romantic inclination. Martino finds in her the perfect singer, with intuition and technical expressive abilities. Pambianchi is not only the one who perfects the story, she is the one who accompanies it, precedes it, becomes its muse, the figure who exudes sensuality and delicate bitterness.

The compositions layer time, lay carpets over decades, in a romantic crescendo, in which the conjugation skills are delicate, in which no forcing raises its voice. 

It feels like being in a silent film, from an unknown time, with messages and messengers busy underwater, without needing to rise to the surface. The songs bring to mind little-known artists and works, developing everything with important personalities and methods. You can feel the fragility of relationships, of existence, of not being able to freeze time. An impressive human manifesto, in which beauty comes from the revelation of who we are. 

Everything develops with reason and emotion intertwined, passionate, eager, in which sound incursions prevail, skilfully defeating the song form. The two of them are interested in working on their obvious fragilities, striving to make their individual riches a safe haven.

The emotional space highlights respect for internalisation, the desire to allow instincts to be channelled into constraints, as an educational method. 

Here Martino's talent becomes a series of miracles impossible to ignore: what famous and celebrated artists have done and for which they have been recognised, he does with the same skill, in a beam of light that resembles a rainbow inside the human mind, all as if transferred to his fingers.  The territories explored encompass a perfect mix of pulsations, elaborations, cerebral surges with a sinuous sense of aesthetics, where hermeticism, complicity, parallel paths, suggestions, hints and mood-driven dialectics converge in a vessel that sways in the chest.

Martino displays his studies, his listening becomes a digital and analogue extension of his thinking, his writing style starts from afar, and in these compositions he inserts the inevitable need to evolve, to build, in his abilities, a mental palace that can also become physical. Dynamics are the main element of the entire work, emblematic of complexity made chewable and digestible, in which folk, ambient, dream pop, darkwave, post-rock, and minimal shoegaze are only the exposure of the lights, but in reality, the electrical cables pass through the underground, the secret system to which there is no access...

Scratches has the intensity of dawn, the preparatory act to the intensity of revelation, the stage on which songs become the tablecloth on which to lay down the labours, the efforts, the interactions between celestial and human breaths, in a space-time that seems to come from great civilisations, wrapped in modern sensibility. But the language, the meaning, the positioning of this work smells of linen, dust, large stones, marble monuments under the gaze of the clouds. 

Elisa and Martino have played with time, working between hidden workshops and the glitter of modern eccentricity, favouring the crossing of human excursions by using the least simple of faculties, slowness, favouring instead the understanding of the origin of these butterflies, which, intact and elegant, leap over the sand of every hourglass. Songs that translate memory, that attach time to reality, wearing the most credible sound costume.

It is also worth emphasising the beauty, depth and added value of a cover that attracts, invites, explains much of the content and is a visual poem, a page of literature that shows density and nuances, attaching different meanings with colours like unfurled sails: as you look at it, you move, you immediately navigate in a sound that will be reiterated and specified with the six compositions. The scratches are vertical, white, as if symbolising the fragility of childhood, with the outline like the future that awaits it...

And now let's learn about the paths taken by these white butterflies, one by one.

Song by song

1 Introduction

Take an autumn night with the gloomy chords of Pieter Nooten (Clan of Xymox) and the visionary poetry of the Humberstone twins (In The Nursery) and you realise how much memory lives in this glacial composition: Martino enters the wounds, finding their rational entrance, without voices, without song form, but with a head that looks to the tail, with the rhythmic illusion in the finale, brief, unsettling and perfect. Spirituality shapes the entire projection of this work, here favoured by a physical skeleton that determines its power and stability. 

2 An Ode To

It is minimalist melancholy, with arpeggios reminiscent of trip hop, measured electronics in a discontinuous flow become the foundation on which Elisa's Hamlet-like singing, with the perfect strategy of vocal doubling, gives the whole a mournful but not desperate feeling, in a silence that wanders beautifully between the chords. The lyrics measure generational decadence and the impossibility of living except in solitude, with the fall of light. Echoes of Japan's Quiet Life make us understand how the Roman duo do not forget the avant-garde, the march of disciplined notes and sombre chords. A cradle full of silk given by the union of the pastel colours of the music and the stage of Elisa's writing.

3 Beyond

Between the post-rock impulses of early Explosions in the Sky and the penetrating Anatolian folk and Turkish rock forms, Beyond is a chandelier that swings between the East and clean chaos, with a layering that leads to a sensual dance, full of breaths, and vocals that enhance the whole, like an apnoea that communicates a wound...

4 Wonderboy

The Xmal Deutschland of the first part of the song opens magnificently with the creaking of a synth reminiscent of Christian Death's Catastrophe Ballet, but then Elisa, with her veil over the strings, becomes the rain of an ancient storm, coming from the 1980s, in lyrics inclined towards the desire for change, while Martino broadens the horizons, starting from the sky and ending up on the seabed with a solo that is every bit as good as Peter Frampton's, with a very high sensitivity, like a voice that alternates with that of his partner, with the ability to control the sustain and enhance the vision of the notes...

5 Elevation

A palace that becomes physical, with the sparkle of the guitar and the tremor of the distorted bass, to a distortion that establishes the boundary between spiritual elevation and drama. The stop and go allows the six strings to grate everything. The drumming embraces the atmosphere, which also manages to be sensual. A great ability to connect Buñuel's passion for skies full of surprises and the exponential ardour of Virginia Woolf's writings, which need no praise here. Mysterious, decadent, dreamy, the song also amazes with its measured, unexpected progression.... 

6 Storm, Black

Elisa takes on the guise of a melodic witch, with words that play in the rain, with flights of feathers, angelic choirs, while the musical fabric ranges, like fragments in search of connections (found), to become the perfect farewell, giving hopeful breaths, without, however, anything that can make us forget the scratches... Balanced, enchanting and magical, it finds in its finale a form of suspension that flows into a storm similar to that of Dead Can Dance's album Within of a Dying Sun, in which awareness and richness visit fear. A poetic, vibrant, nervous conclusion that smells of perfection...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

29 January 2026

Dear Company:

Elisa Pambianchi

Martino Cappelli

Giuseppe Marino - Bass 

Giulio Maschio (Aguirre) - Drums

Featuring:

Simona Ferrucci (Winter Severity Index) - Synth on the track Wonderboy

Adriano Vincenti (Macelleria Mobile di Mezzanotte) - (noise effects) on the tracks Storm and Black

My Review: Julian Cope - I Dream the Cosmos Atavistic

 Julian Cope - I Dreamt the Cosmos Atavistic

To witness only a part of the possibilities available to us means limiting our consciousness, stopping knowledge in a place where the flows seem to exclude anything else. This concept applies to all forms of life. In music, we have examples of insights that are not accepted or known, and are scattered in the mechanisms described at the beginning. The discomfort of commitment, of internalisation, of unease that provides different information is not usually practised.

Here we find ourselves discussing a work that strips away what we are accustomed to consuming, with a celestial installation conducted primarily at a slow pace, dispersing musical clichés and every form that is generally considered appealing, easy, and fluid in its digestion.

Julian Cope's new album is a skilful rebellion, entirely rooted in the luminous mantra created by the contact between the heavens and the musician's mind, here engaged in translating spirituality and research into a generous work of connections, in which the studio is a giant lens that makes every detail described seem tiny. Minimalist, expansive, energetic and misleading, these three tracks are a wonderful exploration of images that cannot be photographed through immobility, but rather through the continuous X-ray of introspection that leaves input and questions in the brain.

The degree of total indifference in every reception is remarkable: we find ourselves with our senses on edge, with fear, with the sky advancing like a snail into our selves, unaware of the enormous power of this exercise. What seem to be bombastic, annoying, boring and uninteresting noises are in fact the mechanisms that we silence, disown, ignore and do not nurture. The spectacular aspect is the whispers, the slow streams of sound that suddenly appear and then immediately disappear: a challenge to logic and patience, a sensationally intelligent spite capable of exploring the invisible.  

And when suddenly the compositions diverge from the long minutes that preceded them, in which everything seemed set in stone, there is the cunning of a change of colour, of gear, which also offers a growing narrative tension, in which the perspective draws uncertainties and tremors.

An use of the theory of bewilderment in a manner typical of silent cinema, but without subtitles... 

Everything is landscape, uninhabited and solemn, with theatrical hypnosis that stores our reactions to make them pathetic: Julian smiles mockingly, with his solemn meditation, his mantras and his glaciers moving towards a black hole that we do not immediately perceive. But it is precisely this dark space that turns on the light bulb, making our fear of light, of fake melody, of our way of understanding music, practicable within us. 

A fruitful study leads us to write down our reactions as we listen, as if we were both patients and psychologists, with the truth maturing, listening again and again to this permeating flow. Our thoughts become a spaceship, flying beneath the ocean, swimming in the ice tongues of Everest, walking in the lava of a volcano and dying on contact with the first comet encountered.

The trance-like state we experience breaks down our defences, does not produce addiction and colours our perceptions, transporting us into a state of wonder when we hear the Liverpool artist's voice utter the words of the title, during Psalm Zero, in a semi-song that becomes emotional and hormonal therapy for this penetrable and impenetrable artistic prodigy: everything depends on our mental and physical elasticity.

A terrifying prospect for comedy lovers, stuck in a metal chair, with fragments of sound penetrating our every reaction: IDTCA is torture that dilates the blood and turns the mind into a spring, in a final leap that makes us forget our ignorance... 

Who Put All Of This is a spiritual settlement in search of a plot, using sounds that move in an industrial area, noises and electric shocks inside a forest that raises its nose towards the night sky, with an ethereal final expansion.

Stargarden reveals darkness, in a gloomy and slow search for a loop that, magically, never arrives. Severa advances with a bombastic note, like a microscope analysing every particle of the psyche, in a thirty-minute analytical session in which silence offers silver stars...

Psalm Zero is a horror film that benefits from Julian's voice, free to express a thickening of the harmonic plot, an orderly chaos, with an industrial attitude in the chromosomes of an ambient genre, like an impossible-to-avoid crossroads. Electronic tracks shake up the journey and we find ourselves in a spatial whirlwind.

An animalistic work, in which the elements of nature arrive in the place furthest removed from any modern expression of the concept of music. Everything clashes, involving hard work and patience, inflicting a powerful defeat on undeserving taste and sowing the hope of a metamorphosis that will restore the ancient role of listening. Not a sterile anachronism, but an invitation to slow down, even in music, the rhythms, the human perversions, to bring us back into contact with our surroundings, like a secular observation of creation.

It is not artistic courage, crisis, madness or anything else, but rather a trespassing into the places where a more secure and balanced soul is constructed. Sensible, majestic, oppressive in a truly celestial way (to create allegories, metaphors and flows of selected energies), this is truly an authentic work of abandonment and distance...

Simply a monumental journey of aggregations and rejections, from which we can only depart to immerse our tears in the irrigation channels of our minds...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

22 January 2026

https://merchandiser.headheritage.co.uk/products/i-dream-the-cosmos-atavistic

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxOdPtLRV6i3MbQ5KAM4sRZXNMXRBLK7P

La mia Recensione: The Pogues (Featuring Kirsty MacColl) Fairytale of New York

 The Pogues - Fairytale of New York

Ci sono ricorrenze che avanzano, si mostrano, hanno dei desideri e già tutto questo farebbe pensare alla fortuna…

Poi vi sono cuori più profondi, attenti, che passano, in silenziosa parata, a perlustrare quei lati dell’esistenza senza fari. Non sono favole, poesie e tantomeno dei bei sogni, bensì il pavimento di rapporti in difficoltà, in cui la precarietà fa bruciare la pelle del cuore, e non solo.

In quei luoghi gli stenti, le lacrime, i disagi e le ambasce sono un abbraccio poco voluto ma esistente. E chi ci mette lo sguardo ha la saggezza dell’intimità giudiziosa, in generosa empatia e solidarietà. Il Natale è ormai una festività corrotta e va corretta con canzoni come questa, che per il Vecchio Scriba è l’unica che mostra davvero interesse per vicende che sono terremoti e che vengono, disgraziatamente, nascoste sotto gli addobbi, le luci e il chiasso di gente senza rispetto nei confronti di chi invece ha un autobus pieno di strazianti e complesse tragedie.

Ma anche da un litigio può nascere un arcobaleno a irradiare la corteccia cerebrale di nuove panoramiche visive.

Sia benedetta la modalità del duetto narrativo, di una melodia folk irlandese, della valigia e della visione di strade strette, senza cielo, a New York. Un pianoforte e una tastiera sono i semi di un prato immaginifico che pian piano copre la storia di dolcezza e malinconia, in un teatro punk dentro una pellicola cinematografica, mentre perlustra lati umani che paiono banditi in cerca di una resa…

L’epica e la nostalgia compiono passi di valzer mentre la band prende Shane e Kirsty e li mette uno di fronte all’altro sul ring, in un match di pugilato nel quale nessuno getta la spugna sino a quando il clima non conosce la ragione per modificare il tutto.

Il brano ha un’alternanza micidiale, su piani emotivi e razionali, e pure musicali, che induce alle riflessioni ma solo come successione a lacrime, emozioni e urla lanciate tutte sul vento di un dramma che illumina anche chi è avaro di tutto ciò: eccovi il vero miracolo di Natale…

I contrasti trovano spazio nei nuovi sogni e nelle delusioni che il testo riassume ma con garbata gentilezza, pur non mancando anche espressioni volgari, tuttavia necessarie.

La sincerità in musica non può avere il bavaglio e FONY lo dimostra pienamente, senza indugi.

Tutto parte da una prigione, con l’alcol a segnare il respiro del protagonista (MacGowan), qui con l’unica voce che sembra far apparire davanti ai nostri occhi ettolitri di amarezze e sogni.

E, mentre ascolta un vecchio brano (The Rare Old Mountain), la tristezza della memoria si condensa, straziandolo, con l’amore per una donna che ricompare, scatenando l’ardore di un sentimento mai sopito. I due battagliano, lottano, mettono barriere sino a quando la resa arriva grazie ai sogni di lui, mai pronto a rinunziare a chi gli fa battere forte il cuore e che dimentica i problemi e va oltre.

Nell’autodistruzione amorosa vi sono petali e raggi che si muovono tra bestemmie e insulti, ma con il progetto di silenziare il tutto.

Ecco che la disillusione del sogno americano trova i suoi confini, i limiti e il pressappochismo di una democrazia che ha causato nuove povertà. Per risolvere questo problema non rimane che l’amore, che unisce.

Nei ricordi l’Irlanda diventa un balcone, un bisogno di panorami mai inquinati, dove ogni cosa scorre senza  gli inganni della modernità. Non è un caso che molti suoi cittadini negli anni Ottanta siano andati negli States sbagliando il momento: Reagan stava distruggendo senza impedimenti e la profonda umanità di questi nuovi emigranti trovava, improvvisamente, un semaforo rosso, un calcio ai sogni, subendo una serie di mortificazioni tremende, finendo in una gabbia inimmaginabile.

In tutto questo la composizione riesce a far compiere alla nostra visione dei fatti raccontati un’analisi dettagliata di chi, in una guerra non vista e mai evidenziata, si trova tra alcol, rabbia e la consolazione di amori impossibili…

La voce rauca e alienata, piena di nebbia e brividi di Shane, ci porta nei canali di una mente sensibile e quindi vulnerabile, con ampie falcate nelle pareti di desideri a cui a fatica riesce a obiettare. In questa stupefacente credibilità, lo affianca una fata con le gote arrossate (come la sua ugola) che scalcia e dichiara guerra al suo amato. Un duetto/duello che esplora la fiumana di differenze tra il cantante nato a Pembury e poi divenuto irlandese e la ragazza di Croydon, trasportati come per non magia in un luogo distante dalle loro radici. La canzone assembla tutto con meticolosità, puntando i fari dell’energetica pulsione Celtic Rock di una formazione che, partendo da basi storiche conclamate, sa aggiungere novità a un matrimonio che si rivela perfetto. Si danza, lentamente prima (abbracciati) e poi velocemente, come in uno scalmanato rituale fisico che contempla lo spostamento e la distribuzione di un sudore vero.

Ed ecco l’evidente opposizione al Natale, come un libro di saggistica non contemplato, ma ritenuto dagli artisti in questione assolutamente necessario. Apparentemente leggera, la composizione è una delicata operazione chirurgica, un valore aggiunto inaspettato, un insieme di linguaggi da strada, di chi nel niente ha un tutto da improvvisare e un nulla da perdere…

I Pogues offrono la mano, una coperta per fare della speranza e dello scambio dei doni una possibilità di arricchimento, che non passa attraverso la mediocrità di regali, i quali sono possibili solo per chi ha avuto fortune e capacità che non gravitano di certo nella strada di coloro che la povertà la vivono con tutti i suoi shock.

Fairytale of New York è una ciminiera, un porto del cuore, un sussulto, con la capacità innegabile di fare della canzone un riscatto, un progetto, un ricordo, un bacio, una bevuta infinita con chilometri di battiti piovigginosi, un delirio silente nella dinamica di armonie musicali che, tra muscoli e carezze, riesce a far planare un racconto che fa del mondo tenuto segregato un paradiso dove la dignità non viene misurata con la ricchezza, la posizione sociale e l’arroganza del dominio, e in cui l’unica, discutibile, sete, è quella del potere e non quella di una sana Guinness…

Il testo fa sentire la schiuma di un’escoriazione causata da una caduta (fisica e morale), per poi disinfettare il tutto e ristabilire equilibrio e forza. Molto più di una metafora, questo episodio passa attraverso realtà, mitologia, tradizioni antiche per dare al cuore irlandese una bandiera che sventola e che sempre lo farà con una fierezza indiscutibile. Quando offre al passato la possibilità di consolare, non smette di creare il presente e nuovi ricordi, confezionando perfettamente la vera identità della terra del trifoglio.

E, quando allude al gioco d’azzardo (per poter cambiare le sorti dei protagonisti) si nota che nel baratro avanzano ancora scelte criticabili ma necessarie. Ed è apoteosi: passa attraverso una ingenuità che diventa poesia, una forma altissima di ironia, con petali amari che cadono nel cuore della vicenda… 

Quando la città della mela si mostra inospitale e crudele con chi non ha la fortuna sulle spalle, ecco che il testo sfodera un’amara constatazione che diviene, però, motivo di forza e di distinzione di un’identità che non teme di evidenziare le differenze. 

Viene voglia di spogliarsi, di andare a Dublino e dintorni, di avere un sacco di iuta vuoto e la propensione a metterci dentro i visi e le storie di chi, in questo brano, ci ha fatto piangere e sentire orgogliosi di voler raggiungere una nuova meta… 

Alex Dematteis (Vecchio Scriba)

Musicshockworld

Salford

24 12 2025

My Review : The Pogues (Featuring Kirsty MacColl) Fairytale of New York

 

The Pogues - Fairytale of New York

There are anniversaries that advance, reveal themselves, have desires, and all this would already suggest good fortune...

Then there are deeper, more attentive hearts that pass by, in silent parade, to explore those sides of existence without headlights. These are not fairy tales, poems, or even beautiful dreams, but rather the foundation of troubled relationships, where precariousness burns the skin of the heart, and more.

In those places, hardship, tears, discomfort, and anguish are an unwanted but ever-present embrace. And those who look upon them have the wisdom of judicious intimacy, in generous empathy and solidarity. Christmas has become a corrupt holiday and needs to be corrected with songs like this one, which for the Old Scribe is the only one that truly shows interest in events that are earth-shattering and which are, unfortunately, hidden under the decorations, lights and noise of people who have no respect for those who instead have a bus full of heartbreaking and complex tragedies.

But even an argument can give rise to a rainbow that illuminates the cerebral cortex with new visual perspectives.

Blessed be the narrative duet, the Irish folk melody, the suitcase and the vision of narrow, sky-less streets in New York. A piano and a keyboard are the seeds of an imaginative meadow that slowly covers the story of sweetness and melancholy, in a punk theatre inside a film, while exploring human sides that seem like bandits in search of surrender...

Epic and nostalgia take waltz steps as the band takes Shane and Kirsty and puts them face to face in the ring, in a boxing match in which no one throws in the towel until the climate knows the reason to change everything.

The song has a deadly alternation, on emotional and rational levels, as well as musical ones, which leads to reflection but only as a succession of tears, emotions and screams thrown into the wind of a drama that illuminates even those who are stingy with all of this: here is the true miracle of Christmas...

Contrasts find space in the new dreams and disappointments that the lyrics summarise, but with gentle kindness, while not lacking vulgar expressions, which are nevertheless necessary.

Sincerity in music cannot be silenced, and FONY proves this fully, without hesitation.

It all starts in a prison, with alcohol marking the breath of the protagonist (MacGowan), here with the only voice that seems to bring before our eyes one hundred litres of bitterness and dreams.

And, while listening to an old song (The Rare Old Mountain), the sadness of memory condenses, tormenting him, with the love for a woman who reappears, unleashing the ardour of a feeling that has never been dormant. The two battle, struggle, put up barriers until surrender comes thanks to his dreams, never ready to give up on the one who makes his heart beat fast and who forgets his problems and moves on.

In the self-destruction of love, there are petals and rays that move between curses and insults, but with the intention of silencing everything.

Here, the disillusionment of the American dream finds its boundaries, the limits and the sloppiness of a democracy that has caused new poverty. To solve this problem, all that remains is love, which unites.

In memories, Ireland becomes a balcony, a need for unspoilt views, where everything flows without the deception of modernity. It is no coincidence that many of its citizens went to the United States in the 1980s at the wrong time: Reagan was destroying without hindrance and the profound humanity of these new emigrants suddenly found itself facing a red light, a kick in the teeth to their dreams, suffering a series of terrible humiliations and ending up in an unimaginable cage.

In all this, the composition manages to give our vision of the events recounted in a detailed analysis of those who, in a war unseen and never highlighted, find themselves between alcohol, anger and the consolation of impossible loves...

Shane's hoarse, alienated voice, full of fog and shivers, takes us into the channels of a sensitive and therefore vulnerable mind, with wide strides into the walls of desires that he struggles to resist. In this astonishing credibility, he is accompanied by a fairy with red cheeks (like his voice) who kicks and declares war on her beloved. A duet/duel that explores the flood of differences between the singer born in Pembury and then became Irish and the girl from Croydon, transported as if by magic to a place far from their roots. The song meticulously brings everything together, spotlighting the energetic Celtic rock drive of a band that, starting from well-established historical foundations, knows how to add something new to a marriage that proves to be perfect. They dance, slowly at first (embracing) and then quickly, as if in a rowdy physical ritual that involves movement and the distribution of real sweat.

And here is the obvious opposition to Christmas, like a non-fiction book that is not contemplated but considered absolutely necessary by the artists in question. Seemingly light, the composition is a delicate surgical operation, an unexpected added value, a combination of street languages, of those who have nothing to improvise and nothing to lose...

The Pogues offer a helping hand, a blanket to make hope and the exchange of gifts a chance for enrichment, which does not pass through the mediocrity of gifts, which are only possible for those who have had fortunes and abilities that certainly do not gravitate towards those who experience poverty with all its shocks.

Fairytale of New York is a chimney, a harbour of the heart, a gasp, with the undeniable ability to turn the song into redemption, a project, a memory, a kiss, an endless drink with miles of drizzly beats, a silent delirium in the dynamics of musical harmonies which, between muscles and caresses, manages to glide through a story that makes the segregated world a paradise where dignity is not measured by wealth, social position and the arrogance of domination, and where the only, questionable thirst is that of power and not that of a healthy Guinness...

The text evokes the sting of an abrasion caused by a fall (both physical and moral), then disinfects the wound and restores balance and strength. Much more than a metaphor, this episode passes through reality, mythology and ancient traditions to give the Irish heart a flag that flies and will always fly with unquestionable pride. When it offers the past the chance to console, it never stops creating the present and new memories, perfectly encapsulating the true identity of the land of the shamrock.

And when it alludes to gambling (in order to change the protagonists' fortunes), we see that in the abyss, questionable but necessary choices still lie ahead. And it is apotheosis: it passes through a naivety that becomes poetry, a very high form of irony, with bitter petals falling into the heart of the story... 

When the city of apples shows itself to be inhospitable and cruel to those who are not lucky, the text reveals a bitter observation that becomes, however, a source of strength and distinction for an identity that is not afraid to highlight differences. 

It makes you want to strip down, go to Dublin and its surroundings, have an empty jute bag and the inclination to put in it the faces and stories of those who, in this song, made us cry and feel proud to want to reach a new goal... 

Alex Dematteis (Vecchio Scriba)

Musicshockworld

Salford

24 12 2025