The adventurousness, eclecticism, and sheer creativity of Messiness is on immediate show as “Feature With A Rapper” opens up their highly-anticipated debut album, an explosion of indie rock grooves, sassy sax, psychedelic-tinges, desert vibes, Balearic motifs, and, as you might expect, rap interludes. That’s how you kick an album off. But it isn’t just musically astute; the song, a musing on the tricks and gimmicks modern music employs to claw its way to the top of the heap, a satire on marketing and musical fashions, shows they are a lyrically smart band, too.
“Previous Life,” which follows, feels less like the Brit-pop sound that can often be detected in their music but more like the actual sixties source material, and probably due to leading man Max Raffa having called Liverpool home for a while, it’s a real Mersey-beast of a pop song!
“Eternally Unbound” blends a sort of sixties chamber pop feel with sci-fi embellishment, alternative, nostalgic euro-pop with modern, yet slightly off-beat indie. (Remember when I used the word eclectic at the start of this piece? That doesn’t begin to cover it!)
Recent single “Cómo Baja, Cómo Sube” feels like a long lost Kinks single, and if you are a fan of indie music that doesn’t know what the rules are and where the demarcations on the musical map lie, “Doctoral Get-Together” is for you – a timeless and genre-blending slice of…well, you tell me. (I do this for a living, and even I have run out of easy tags and labels to describe their music.)
Things end with the dreamscaping and hallucinogenic “By the Sea,” an ambient soundscape imbued with the spirit of the ’50s crooner.
Max Raffa is a polymath, a creative genius, a musical nomad, a wandering minstrel, and a maker of music that ignores fad and fashion but which would be welcome, yet still stand out, in every era and any musical quarter. But he doesn’t travel this musical path alone. He is joined on stage by guitarist Rosario Lo Monaco, Filippo La Marca on keyboards and backing vocals, bassist Giovanni Calella, and Luca Anello behind the drumkit, to bring his creative vision to life.
As we head towards that time when music sites and magazines are compiling their best music of the year compilations, expect to see this eponymous masterpiece riding high in the lists…or they will have me to answer to!
Vinyl order
Messiness – Messiness [Full Album]
Spotify
Cómo Baja, Cómo Sube’
