I listened to «Everybody’s Going Home» this morning on a packed regional radio, while I was going to university.
In front of me there was a girl my age with the trolley stuck between her knees and a canvas bag placed on top, swollen in that way you immediately recognise: clothes to wash.
We didn’t say a word to each other. For the duration of my trip, however, the album became the soundtrack of her day rather than mine, because it seemed written for her, for those who live with two addresses and don’t feel entirely at home in either of them.
Before the release of the album Ariete had written a post for his fans: «I hope that, when it comes out, you will be in the safe place that you call home (with your friends, in your bed, with the person you love, or thinking of someone who is no longer here) to experience it and listen to it as I think it deserves». I was in an uncomfortable seat with the charger at twelve percent, the exact opposite of a safe seat.
She slept with her head against the window, one hand on the trolley handle even in her sleep. Maybe that’s what Aries meant: home isn’t where you sit, it’s what you hold onto when there’s nothing around you that looks like you.
Three years have passed since «The Night». In between there was a stop, therapy, silence.
The cover is a shot by Ilaria Ieie and takes inspiration from «Inside» by Fernanda Uribe: Aries curled up inside an open suitcase, submerged in vintage clothes and objects. I looked at her on the screen and then looked at the girl in front of me. Anyone who has done offsite knows that pose. You sit on the trolley to close it, the zipper doesn’t give way, and at a certain point you realize that you’re in there too, along with the sweaters and things you don’t have the courage to throw away.
The concept is all here. The house stops being a place and becomes an internal space, something you patiently build for yourself. It’s a beautiful and also dangerous idea, and Aries handles it well from the outset.
The hive it starts slowly and puts bees in our place: tiny, fragile creatures who spend their lives looking for the exact spot where they belong. Put like that, it seems like a middle school essay topic. Listened to with the landscape passing by outside the window and a stranger sleeping on her luggage, it’s the most accurate description I’ve heard of what it’s like to be twenty-three years old with an expiring lease.
The heart of the album is a sentimental journey told in no particular order, as it really happens. Tantrums it comes after a long period of looking inside yourself and trying to understand if you are ready to start over with someone. little soldier! it’s in the phase where you still promise everything. Revolution it is the most classic ballad of the lot, the one in which love becomes something to cherish, and it is also the moment in which the album sounds most already heard. My mouth, your mouth look at a closed relationship without rancor and find home right there, in the place where two mouths met, an idea so physical it made me turn up the volume. 10 calls she’s on the other side, inside a toxic relationship and a female figure who never lets herself be fully understood.
What a beautiful life with Angelina Mango is the piece that paved the way, written together. It talks about the chance encounters that change your trajectory, and hearing two girls of the same generation write it together has a weight that goes beyond the featuring.
The other guests each bring a different piece of home. With Fulminacci, in Hand in hand, it is Rome, the city that holds them together by sound and friendship. With Tredici Pietro, in My house/Your house, it is a box of childhood and adolescence memories, the nostalgia of those who realize they have changed without having asked permission. With Primastanzadestra, in When the moon lights upis the actual return: the melancholy of the car after an evening, the windows down, someone driving and no one speaking. They are all names from the same scene, almost the same age, and the effect is that of a dinner with friends rather than a list of guests chosen by marketing.
Then there are the two pieces for which the album probably exists. Tachycardia it is dedicated to a person who is no longer with us and puts the pain alongside childhood, the time when you didn’t know anything yet and shouldn’t have known anything. It is the song that cost her the most, you can feel, and reread in the light of that “thinking of someone who is no longer here” the words of the message to the fans change weight. Session n.65 closes the journey and the title seems like the number of an appointment with the psychologist. There is no need to explain why the end is there: after sixty-four sessions, usually, something has finally been put in order.
The sound remains in that territory where songwriting mixes with urban without either of them winning, and the credit must be divided between four names: Golden Years signs What a beautiful life, Giordano Colombo, Mr. Monkey and Brail divide the rest, and with four different hands on the same suitcase.
The girl got out dragging the trolley with a wheel that was turning crooked. I don’t know where he was going. I like to think that on Sunday evening someone’s washing machine will have finished its cycle, that she will fold the still warm t-shirts and repack her suitcase for the train on Monday.
“Everyone goes home” works like this: you come back to empty your suitcase, not to stay. Aries has washed his clothes, put what he picked up on the street in a drawer and already has the zip half closed. It’s his most focused album, not yet his bravest.
SCORE: 7.25
TO LISTEN NOW
L’hiveare – La Mia Bocca, La Tua Bocca – Casa Mia / Casa Tua (feat. Tredici Pietro) – Quando La Luna Si Accende (feat. first room on the right)
TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY
Half an hour to listen to from start to finish.
TRACKLIST
The hive
Tantrums
Che Bella Vita (feat. Angelina Mango)
Revolution
My Mouth, Your Mouth
Tachycardia
Hand In The Hand (feat. Fulminacci)
little soldier!
Casa Mia / Casa Tua (feat. Tredici Pietro)
10 calls
Quando La Luna Si Accende (feat. first room on the right)
Session n.65
