• Voto:
Che Paese, l'Australia! Ce ne siamo innamorati scoprendo i primi film di Peter Weir ("Picnic at Hanging Rock", soprattutto), leggendo l'affascinante testo di Bruce Chatwin, "Le Vie dei Canti", e ascoltando questo magnifico lavoro dei Church nell'anno del Signore 1985. All'epoca il gruppo aveva già pubblicato altri quattro lavori non disprezzabili, ricordiamo almeno "Remote Luxury", ma la freschezza e la vitalità presenti in "HeyDay" lo fanno somigliare ad uno scoppiettante debutto.
Si parte con "Mirrh" e, d'incanto, ci si ritrova tra gli sterminati spazi delle misteriose pianure australiane. Un contributo essenziale alla credibile suggestione è dato dalla voce del leader, Steve Kilbey, calda e dall'inconfondibile timbro.
Le chitarre di Martin Wilson-Piper e di Pete Koppes sono le protagoniste in "Tristesse", brano a tinte tenui ed iridescenti, collocabile nella migliore tradizione pop.
"Already Yesterday", il pezzo più beatlesiano dell'album, intriso di nostalgia, avrebbe potuto essere una hit, se il mondo non fosse quello che è.
Con "Columbus", forse il brano di presa più immediata, i nostri mostrano un'insospettabile grinta e di saperci fare anche col rock.
Ma le sorprese non sono finite: in "Happy Hunting Ground", pezzo strumentale di grande suggestione, fanno la loro comparsa, sopra un tappeto di ipnotiche percussioni e di effetti sonori, i violini e i fiati, arrangiati con gusto dallo stesso Kilbey (autore anche di alcuni album solisti interessanti e misconosciuti) e da Peter Walsh.
Il meglio però deve ancora venire. Con la triade "Tantalized, "Disenchanted" e "Night of Flight" la "Chiesa" ci offre il meglio del suo repertorio. Tutti gli elementi musicali citati si amalgamano, dando vita ad un gustoso "pastiche", non senza far prevalere ora l'uno, ora l'altro.
Ciò che, comunque, caratterizza la musica dei Church è la sua forte identità, nonostante non abbiano inventato nulla di nuovo e i padri putativi, psichedelia e sixties in primo luogo, siano sempre ben riconoscibili. È forse proprio la loro consapevolezza di essere "nani" che salgono sulle spalle dei "giganti" a renderli preferibili ad altri gruppi simili di quel periodo, sicuramente più pretenziosi ma meno dotati.
L'album chiude in bellezza con "Youth Worshipper" e "Roman" e che vanno a completare un lavoro che vale la pena di (ri)scoprire. Si dice che sulle note di "Night of Flight" c'è chi, anche nel nostro emisfero boreale, sia riuscito a scorgere la Croce del Sud. Provare per credere.
Elenco tracce testi e samples
01 Myrrh (04:21)
Emerald haunt in overdrive
Nightmare descent into Jericho city
Camel dust heralds our arrival
New Christ beneath the drumkit moon
Oh Lord we are threatened again
In the slipstream pull of the federal men
Plummet in some seamless night
Down here to earth it's hopeless then
Apache gunman in the boiling crowd
Who never got to meet you last time
We're interrupted by the telephone
You didn't think they were invented then
Oh Lord we need miracles
We need more wine and gold
We need slaves and roads and personal favors
We need microphones and manifolds
How can you be so invisible
Give me the nerves to see
Privilege on privilege
An unwanted discovery
So now we're cruising down this shuddering highway
With a dead sun shining on my back
And we talk about the way people treat us back there
Their hollow laughter, the pain in their eyes
Oh Lord I trust your intentions
But money strangles our love
Struggling like a fool with my junk and my jewels
You would have thought I'd had enough
How can you be so invisible
Give me the nerves to see
Privilege on privilege
An unwanted discovery
02 Tristesse (03:29)
Here in this desert, beneath the sun and stars
Still troubled by the rumblings of a million distant cars
Please be good to me tonight, let me find my way
The air has some command in it I cannot disobey
A gunfight in Dodge City, a murder in Bombay
All these deeds and worldly needs I must shrug off today
All my life spent searching for prowess
Left me lying here with you, tristesse
I was working in an orchard that grew the strangest fruit
It wasn't Mother Nature that made those trees take root
Your children cannot hear you, they only want your loot
You hold on to their essence like a parachute
They never believed you were in distress
Now you've gone and left them with tristesse
Oh, waters inflamed
Ah, fires burning out
Ah, ice melting down
Ah, fires burnt out
A hotel suite in a rich man's town, a hut in Botany Bay
A prisoner by my own device, a mountain in my way
I'm gonna have to alter my address
"Cause I can't stay much longer with tristesse
And they call this carnival progress
Invited by our queen tonight, tristesse
03 Already Yesterday (04:16)
It's already yesterday, we're off the calendar
I heard the sirens play just like an orchestra
Mechanical bird of prey sing for your emperor
Last broken flash of love still in the camera
We don't feel those locks and chains
We won't listen to the lizard part of our brains
Giving the orders
Another morning we'll be gone
I start the car for Ten Mile Beach
And maybe Avalon, across the water
It's already yesterday and nobody's answering
Disconnected, drift away, nobody's questioning
Head silver, feet of clay, who is surrendering
They fall in our heyday, I am remembering
(Chorus)
We can't feel those aches and pains
We won't listen to the voices in the city rain
Giving the orders
Another morning I'll be gone
I start the car for Violet Town
And then to Babylon, over the border
04 Columbus (03:50)
The king had something changed within him
I should have told him no
Oh Columbus, I never should have let you go
Now aching wires, midnight fires
Things I could not know
Oh Columbus, I never should have let you go
You don't suppose there'd
Be room in here somewhere for me
I think I just need
Someone's words to reassure me
I don't blame any of you, and I don't blame myself
Waiting for my small reward
It's going to come somehow
Oh Columbus, I wish that you could see us now
We don't posses a single empty tear
Or furrowed brow
Oh Columbus, I wish that you could see us now
You don't suppose there'd
Be room in here somewhere for me
I think I just need
Someone's words to reassure me
I can't change any of you, I can't change myself
The man had something strange about him
He should have let me know
Oh Columbus, I wish I'd never let you go
You don't suppose there'd
Be room in here somewhere for me
I think I just need
Someone's words to reassure me
I don't blame any of you, and I don't blame myself
Columbus
06 Tantalized (05:00)
God I've been asleep so long, I've been away
Back from software limbo the natives call today
I let their promises bind me
I let seductive logic blind me
I embraced a machine, I went through the routine
And I hid from the people who were trying to find me
Till the day comes when you realize
Otherwise you never care
Pandora's box reveals a new surprise
Can't wait to see your eyes, now you've been tantalized
For a hundred and one voluptuous days I broke the law
The labyrinth was closing so we panicked up a door
I let their wanton flesh obsess me
I felt their dreams and drugs assess me
I was hired and fired yet never inspired
Flattering, chattering words to impress me
All that glittered had me mesmerized
Otherwise I would have dared
Guess the nature of our enterprise
Can't stop to sympathize, how you've been tantalized
I turned up in some harsh doomed city on another plane
I couldn't believe the room I got or the guests I entertained
I felt the dirty streets surround me
I let the buzzing swarm confound me
I gave money to ghosts, I insulted my hosts
I could never get off the stuff that spellbound me
07 Disenchanted (03:55)
Well look at you,
Hands full of money you always wanted to have
Saying sweet life is a downright drag
Down to the very last seed in the bag
As if it's never gonna end
And the scene is through
Summer slipped under in this neighborhood
I'd like to hold onto you if I could
But now I'm gonna have to let you go for good
My disenchanted friend
They say that character you play is rising fast
So you get drunk, make a half second jump
And experience it as the past
But this is it, the closer you get
The deeper you go, the tighter the net looks to me
Do you enjoy the view
They say it makes you dizzy your first time up there
Till you get used to breathing rarefied air
Auditioning for the part of Mr. Despair
Well I know him personally
And this hotel's a zoo
You gotta be some creature to get a room in here
You can live like a king on a throne of tears
It's a mighty long way from the innocent years
And it waits inevitably
(Chorus)
And I'm asking you
If you think that success is its own reward
Now then go and see what your persistence has scored
The voice is a'calling and it can't be ignored
You might be underground but you're overinsured
You used to be unknown now you're mapped and explored
You like to be untouched now you're handled and pawed
And it's never gonna end
(Chorus)
09 Youth Worshipper (03:46)
Youth worshipper, goddess of ruin
Youth worshipper, like you know what you're doing
I'll bet the sun and rain never touch your face again
Race against the time
Youth worshipper, hope you know what you're worth now
Youth worshipper, Like you're paying the earth now
You want the child back, want an aphrodisiac
To fill the crack with time
Hooves and horns and teeth and bones
I'm gonna stitch you up when you come unsewn
Youth worshipper, wrapped in blue fox and ermine
Youth worshipper, got no pity for vermin
Your engines and machines drink your fuel and steal your scenes
They come between in time
(Chorus)(Repeat first verse)
10 Roman (03:53)
Oh what a feeling baby, knowledge and brutality
Whose soul you stealing baby, lost your immortality
Another empty conquest, Venus set me free
Oh what a ritual father, father why you leaving me
They've found another martyr, rather it was him than me
They took away his language, then his memory
He said "I'm never, never coming back again"
Oh what to battle Muslim, what a noble enemy
We have to kill them bastards, then compose an elegy
I thought I saw their leader fallen on his knees
He said "I'm never, never coming back again"
Oh what an ending baby, promise you'll remember me
I'm not pretending baby, your sweet and wicked treachery
Water all my orchids, save my dynasty
I said "I'm never, never coming back again"
Carico i commenti... con calma
