Review: Negrita – “Song for ruthless years” (track for trace)

Track for track

In the blue (letter to the masters of the earth)
The song takes inspiration from a famous piece of Bob Dylan, which is Masters of War. There we were talking about the Society of the 60s, of the wars that were at that moment. Instead, we tell the contemporary society, that of 2025. A song with a marked pace, a solid groove and rock and roll. We are rather proud of this piece. Somehow it is perhaps even the most representative piece of the disc and it is no coincidence that it opens it.

We are the others
Contemporary society tends to schematize, and sometimes it does it drastically: either you are white or you are black, or you are progressive or you are a conservative … it never considers a third way. There are people who do not recognize themselves in any deployment and “we are the others” means this, that is, there is a third, a fourth, a fifth way to contemporary society and we try to tell in this song the world we see with our eyes. We have a conscience, we have a culture and we want to show it.

Love or leave it alone
A song that at the Groove level immediately gave us great satisfaction. Among other things, there is also a special that is very funky and therefore we have enjoyed bringling it because it has a very negotiated sound of a certain period. In this passage we say that if the alternative to love is to hate, there is no need.

Song to Dylan
At the beginning of his career Bob Dylan dedicated a song, Song to Woody, to Woody Guthrie, his musical reference from young people. We wanted to write a text respecting this tradition, a song to Dylan. Also on a musical level we composed a song that looks like Dylan's style by having fun with philology. It is an acoustic song.

There are no innocent friend of my friend
A very promising tour of agreements had come out and the next step would have been to write a text. It was Easter day, Pau was in his studio with open windows. He lives a little in the hill, under a town with the railway, the road, the river and the urban agglomeration. He heard the bells of the town church under the house, then a police siren and took this hook from reality to insert it in the first line of the text. From there to follow the idea came and it was completed practically alone. So much so that the next day he brought him to the studio and the piece was already practically finished. Then we arranged it and made it become what you will listen to. There are no innocent, my friends.

Good luck
Good luck, otherwise said Shalalala from the name of the archive: we have hard disk with old material that we every now and every now and this is a song from '99 to which we wanted to give a chance. We worked on it for a while, a version came out that did not completely convince us and we tried to upset it in the speed, over time and is the one you feel on the disc.

Where did we make a mistake
One of the most rock pieces there are on the album. In this song we try to make an analysis of strengths and weaknesses of our generation. Seeing the results in today's reality, it comes to think that somewhere we made a mistake. Our generation has basically produced very few relevant things for the trend of the world and we want to take responsibility for it.

Long live Italy
There is a wonderful tradition of songwriters in Italy. It would be wrong to believe that, since we rock, we do not listen to this musical genre, on the contrary, we grew up listening to and appreciating it. One of our favorites is Francesco De Gregori who wrote many important songs, every line he writes is a diamond. We wanted to show our esteem for De Gregori through our version of Viva l'Italia, a song that has a fitting content for this historical moment and which is well fit into this concept.

It cannot be stopped
The album ends with it cannot be stopped, which sings Drigo. It is a song born during the Lockdown, a period in which Drigo clearly felt that it was not the case to write anything, strongly warning the weight of the drama we were experiencing. Once finished, if it were ever over, we would have liked to remove it and never think about it again. But something dug inside and this feeling came especially when the summer approached and we all knew that, having the good weather, we could have come out. We lived waiting for summer as something enormously precious, something that until a few months earlier we simply taken for granted. This inevitability of the seasons that change, of the land that continues its existence, beyond the errors, of the things that humanity manages to do, puts us in contact with the feeling of greatness that man can feel, without confronting instead with the nullity that is really faced with the enormousness of the universe. It is a song that, celebrating with joy the arrival of summer, also wants to emphasize the contrast that is in the relationship between man and nature.

To listen immediately

We are the others – there are no innocent my friend – where we were wrong

To skip immediately

A concept album is to be heard from start to finish!

Score: 7.50

In the blue (letter to the masters of the earth) – vote 7.50
We are the others – vote 8.00
Love or leave it alone – 7.00 vote
Song to Dylan – 7.00 vote
There are no innocent my friend – 7.50 vote
Good luck – 7.00 vote
Where we made a mistake – 7.50 vote
Long live Italy – 7.50 vote
It cannot be stopped – 7.50 vote

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