Post mortem of dogs: the return of the Italian IT-POP Messiah

Nine years of silencewithout even having social networks, interrupted only by small fires, dots also difficult to connect: some soundtracks (a candidate for David di Donatello), work as a producer, a couple of unscrupulous individuals published in the middle of the night on YouTube, a collaboration with the baustelle for four songs (two per head) merged in two; Then, without notice, a new album. Post mortem It is the fourth dog albumthe first since the time of Aurora (2016): It was released on April 10 without announcements, preparation, interviews, explanations, nothing. And was welcomed by a generation, the one between thirty and forty years, such as the return of the Messiah. His label, 42records, wrote that “Nobody was waiting for him, we were waiting for him all.” It’s all there.

The fact is that in these seasons of hiding and silence the one-man band of Niccolò Contessa – Romano, 39 years old – has rise to myth more than his author would have liked. Merit of a shy, painful attitude, and of an enormous legacy: it is thanks to dogs if the Italian pop has set off at the beginning of the zero years, that is, in the midst of a lower Middle Ages, then giving rise to what would have been the IT-POP; Countess produced both Mainstream (2015) by Calcutta and Either I make a mess (2017) of Coez, but above all he laid the aesthetic and sound bases of that revolution with his albumsfrom the first, The surprising dog debut album (2011). The formula was at least as much as its talent: synthesizers, a certain pop vocation and brilliant texts, almost neorealistic, with references to brands and situations, at the time concentrated in telling the miseries of a Rome that became the whole of Italy, incorporating the crisis of creatives, the generation of hipstersthe first social tics, the bourgeoisie devoured by its own ambitions. There was a generation, there. As there would have been in the following Glamor (2013) and precisely Aurora (2016), where the cynical gaze would first review the inner rubble and then, of converse, those of the whole universe.

On closer inspection, the seeds of the great escape were already there: in 2011 he performed with an envelope on his head, not to show his face, a move halfway between marketing strategy and tricks to ensure that people concentrated on music; Further on, he would remain allergic to his image, to the interviews, to the Star-System who in the meantime mounted around that scene also thanks to him. Instead, here he is to demytize: he spoke of “disappearing”, he said how “arrogant” it was to express desires to the stars on the night of San Lorenzo, he reflected on what we were useless in the universe, let alone the famous. If he had not made the tracks lose track, in the middle of the party and explosion of the IT-pop, perhaps he would have normalized, he would not have ascended to the myth. Instead, nothing: tastes have changed, the new Italian pop has also given way to trap and did not keep some of her great promises, with the impression that Countess had left suspended accounts, which in short sooner or later she would return to close a circle and do justice with her talent, whatever it meant. The expectations were very high.

And instead. In Post mortem There is nothing else in addition to these songs, no declaration of intent, nothing, as his press office points out, in these days suffered by requests for interviews, all denied. Still, too Alone From the pieces, something can be inferred: something, that is, it really happened, a death – to satisfy the title – there was all right; The 2025 dogs are not those of 2016, something really broke. It will be that music has changed, that at the beginning it was obscene to propose itself as an indie-pop band while today the real alternative is to make indecipherable discs, of course, but here we are on opposite coordinates to Aurora: do not survive open refrains, minimal and clean sounds, even the refrains to be singing in the clubs; Everything is drowned inside a Lo-Fi electronics that also fishing from post-punk and new wave, which does not seduce and does not seek as before, but requires attention. A blasphemy, today as today. And then: the voice of Contessa is distant, submerged, like a Battisti in Latin soul. There are traces of the best of the alternatives, from all phenomena (which he himself has produced) to Iosonouncane, up to ruthless and existentialist texts, in line with those, still, by Francesco Bianconi dei Baustelle (which Countess often cites as his cornerstone).

A political gesture? A way to say that if they are no longer there The dogs of the pastis there no longer the IT-POP in itself? Well. Maybe it’s exaggerated. The basic message, always starting from the title, is to go beyond the taboos, as if the countess was enjoying what is there after the “death” of the dogs: therefore with the usual cynicism he sings of disregarded expectations (Iat the opening), difficulty of being in the world, privileges to destroy, other ways and above all contradictions of the society in which he lives, from the relationship with sex to that, in fact, with death itself. The style is always his, but the format is different from that of the past. And, let’s be understood, it’s a great record. But it is not the epochal work-closing a circle, the one that would make sense of the IT-pop revolution all in 2025-nor the album of the dogs that was expected. It is simply what was going to do at this momentreleased from the duties and expectations with which his own author, in this handful of songs, makes newspapers. For one, in spite of himself, acclaimed as the messiah of Italian pop, it is already so much.

Source: Vanity Fair

You may also like