Dance, dance, little dancer

Sometimes it happens that out of nowhere music hits me harder than expected. Of course a book or a film can work in the same way through me, but the funny thing with music is the total randomness of its power. Literature and cinema are safe places for me. I usually have a specific reason to read a book and film criticism keeps me up to date with what I want to watch. Therefore, if I am not liking the pages in my hands or the images in front of me I mostly have myself to blame for the bad choice.

Music is different. I cannot resist listening to new albums, but at the same time I am not doing much to follow trends and releases. More importantly, whereas I favour certain types of books and films, when it comes to music I do not stick to a particular genre, which means I do not shy away from radio-friendly pop sensations just as I am always excited to discover underground musicians and independent labels.

On the other hand, this cautiously vague approach to new music does not welcome change easily. Take summer time, for instance. To my ears these months call for easy listening, good-for-driving songs, something to chill out without overthinking too much because we already have to take care of our sweat. So why does Olympia Mare’s SEI ALMENO UN PO’ FELICE?¹ have become my go-to record in the past weeks?

It is difficult to put into words. It is true that nowadays I mostly gravitate towards deceptively simple music,² picking up quiet vibes instead of loud riffs. No wonder then Olympia Mare found their way to me. Their songs are as far away from complexity as possible, beautifully naive in their lack of pretentiousness. They sing of everything and nothing really, they play as friends invited over to not surprise anyone but the host of the party that is all in their head. With the risk of sounding a tad too nostalgic, one possible explanation for my devoted attachment to Olympia Mare is the way they remind me of how I got to where I am right now.

Again, it is hard to explain. When one relies on their feelings to describe something being objective becomes impossible,³ and so to me Olympia Mare is trains and subways and buses and all the cities I lived in and walked through. It is nights spent chatting with long-distance friends on a fragile internet connection, the Greenwich meridian and breakfasts on tiny tables in tiny apartments, furniture that does not exist any more, pubs out of old churches, parks where everything seemed possible and beaches where little made sense, people on stage screaming at me screaming back at them, buying tea with not enough experience to understand the difference among tea leaves and not really caring too much about it, political thoughts I cannot put my finger on, relatives that are no more and habits that never leave, an old man younger than his son and a young woman that I want to be young forever, waving hands and a wedding dress, a book of love and loving books. All of this and the only laugh I care for in between.

When music overwhelms me like this I know that I have a record I will hold dear for a long, long time. And even if it is all so relative I am absolutely convinced of it.