(By Valentina Gentile, Independent Scholar)
In the final lines of Bertrand Russell’s short essay “How to grow old,” included in the volume A Philosophy for Our Time (1953), is one of the most perceptive sentences on the art (and fear) of growing up and growing old. According to the British philosopher, mathematician and Nobel Award winner, a fulfilling life path requires that the personal ego dissolve over time into something bigger. Russell compares human existence to the flow of a river:
An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.
Likewise, by broadening one’s interests and views, “the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.” An aquatic, floating image, a passage that evokes the “swimming in the air” of continuous growth and the catharsis that characterizes the artistic and personal path of Marlene Kuntz, one of the most important bands in the history of Italian rock.
It was in 1989 in Cuneo, a town near the western Alpine arch in Piedmont, that three university students—Riccardo Tesio, Luca Bergia and Cristiano Godano—first formed the band Marlene Kuntz. Evocative and complex (after all, they come from a region of scholars, resistance fighters, illustrious writers, fine wines and the langue d’oc) even in the choice of their name, which refers to Marlene Dietrich and a play on words (later pragmatically abandoned) inspired by the song “Kuntz” by the irreverent Butthole Surfers, Marlene immediately distinguished themselves within the glorious musical panorama of the time: in 1994 they released Catartica (Cathartic), their first studio album (“Catartica is the album we almost didn’t make”[1], Godano would say years later), an album of irresistible power, an extraordinary mix of anger, post-punk screams and refined lyricism. Here the complex nature of the group already is clear: in full grunge long wave, the band’s 14 tracks range from noise samplings from the beloved band Sonic Youth, vomited “waves of words” as in the explosive intro “M.K.,” abrasive electric storms as in “Festa Mesta” (“Sad Party”) and “Merry X-Mas,” the lyrical elegance of “Nuotando nell’aria” (which would represent the stylistic model of the group and of lyricist Godano), and the psychedelic flavor of “Lieve” and the “lightning, thunder and thunderbolts, crash of metal, roaring dawns of universal wars and lethal thunders” of “Sonica” (“Sonic”), the indisputable anthem for several generations of “sonic youths.”
1994 was an exceptional year. In Europe war was ravaging the former Yugoslavia (Italian band Csi would soon dedicate “Cupe Vampe” (“Dark Blazings”), the opening track on their album Linea Gotica, to the burning of the National Library of Sarajevo in 1996). In Rwanda, over the course of about 100 days, over one million people were slaughtered in one of the most frightening genocides in history. Italy itself, between Mani Pulite and the mafia massacres, was at the dawn of the Second Republic, and the electoral victory of Silvio Berlusconi—a controversial tycoon who would remain a key figure in Italy’s national history for the next 30 years—would completely transform the country’s politics, imagination and social structure. The musical panorama, much like in the rest of the world, was still an inexhaustible ferment of genres, ideas, and contaminations. The recent advent of grunge (in early April of 1994, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain committed suicide in his house in Seattle, the city where it all had begun) opened up new perspectives and possibilities: indie music was experiencing a unique season, perhaps the first of its kind in Italy, with groups like Afterhours, Csi, Üstmamò, Mau Mau, La Crus, Massimo Volume, 99 Posse, and Almamegretta. In this musically rich and multifaceted context, Catartica is the revelation of the year: the stormy, literary, bristly and romantic debut of a band that immediately revealed its ability to author magnificent rock music in Italian. It was just what indie music (and music in general) needed in that precise historical moment.
The characteristics of the future Marlene Kuntz are all there: the overall complexity, which we can already sense, extends beyond the noisy current to “swim in the air,” alternating screams of rage with boundless poetry, lightness with darkness. Clear as well is the authorial talent of Cristiano Godano, whose lyrics poetically evoke the post-adolescent fury of Orso, the irresistible protagonist of “Sonica,” whom we see moving awkwardly and with an irregular step, at a lopsided martial rhythm on a crescendo in D minor and with magnificent, bright electric slashes, moving against the crowd, walking with his hands in his pockets under the porticoes of a provincial city immersed in fog:
Le mani dentro a un buco
tasche sfinite
vociare di monete obsolete
Orso ci vede nebulosamente
nebulosamente
già
(Hands in a hole
worn-out pockets
jangle of obsolete coins
Orso sees hazily
Hazily
right)
And again, in the ballad par excellence “Nuotando nell’aria,” which begins with a spoken, almost rap-like intro, “Pelle, è la tua proprio quella che mi manca in certi momenti” (“Your skin is just what I am missing sometimes”) and then proceeds languidly in an emphatic crescendo that expands the rhythm and words, up to the arrival of an unexpected, unpredictable climax of background screams, and then returns to its previous languid lyricism. The lyrics of “Nuotando nell’aria” tell the story of an absence shaped by desire and idealization, by care and a game of repetitions, refined alliterations:
Odori dell’amore nella mente,
dolente, tremante, bruciante …
intanto, l’aria intorno è più nebbia che altro
(Smells of love in the mind,
aching, trembling, burning…
Meanwhile, the air around is fog more than anything else…)
The words recall the linguistic games of Vladimir Nabokov in the opening passage of Lolita: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.“[2] And in fact, Godano has always been an admirer of the exiled Russian author.
Subsequent albums do not diverge from the premise of their debut; angrily leaden songs like “Cenere” (“Ashes”), poignant and dark tracks like “L’esangue Deborah” (“Washed Out Deborah”), sensual and disturbing ballads like “Ti giro intorno” (“I Fly Circles Around You”) from Il vile, 1996, alienating songs like “L’odio migliore” (“The Best Hatred”) or “Le putte” (“The Courtesans”) alternate with more “melodic” ones like “L’esperienza” (“Experience”), “Una canzone arresa” (“A Song of Surrender”) or the splendid “Infinità” (“Infinity”) from Ho ucciso paranoia, 1999. Marlene’s path bravely alternates the guitar of Riccardo Tesio and the drums of Luca Bergia (on bass Dan Solo and Gianni Maroccolo would take turns, among others, up to Luca “Lagash” Saporiti in the current lineup, together with Davide Arneodo), refined sounds with enveloping melodies, supported by Godano’s gravelly voice, still capable of great sweetness. One can think of “La canzone che scrivo per te” (“The Song I Write for You”), a precious duet with Skin, or “E poi il buio” (“And then Darkness”) from Che cosa vedi (What Do You See, 2000), in which the spoken style of Italian band Massimo Volume merges with a restless romanticism summarized in the refrain:
E quando la luna verrà sarà la stessa di allora?
Quella che di noi farà di nuovo una cosa sola?
E quando la luna verrà sarà la stessa di allora?
Quella che dopo ci porterà alle carezze dell’aurora?
(And when the moon rises, will it be the same as it was then?
The one that will make us one again?
And when the moon rises, will it be the same as it was then?
The one that will carry us to dawn’s caresses?)
The Piedmontese band has continued to grow musically in their accuracy and intensity, between often decadent rock sounds and emotional ballads. There is room for post-rock experiments in the style of Mogwai (“L’inganno” [“The Betrayal”] from Bianco Sporco (Dirty White, 2005) and collaborations with their legendary fellow Italian Paolo Conte, jazz contaminations, unexpected experiments (as in the bizarre “Fantasmi” (“Ghosts”) from the album Uno of 2007, where the “Old West” mood blends with sounds similar to Csi). Godano’s lyrics have become increasingly refined, cultured, and full of literary and artistic references, such as Updike, Schiele (“Ricordo” [“Memory”] and “Schiele, lei, me” (“Schiele, She, Me”) from Senza peso [Weightless, 2003], Gadda (“La cognizione del dolore” [“Acquainted with Grief”] from Bianco sporco [Dirty White, 2005]). The bold 2010 album Ricoveri virtuali e sexy solitudini (Virtual Refuges and Sexy Solitudes)is full of noise, electric sounds and invectives against the excesses of technology.
Nella tua luce (In Your Light,2013), their ninth studio album, features refined arrangements, poetry, and rock energy. It’s a bit of an anthology of Marlene’s journey, a brilliant and not at all predictable effort. It moves from the evocative, rarefied title track (“Scoprirai che gli atti della tua bontà mi possono proteggere” [“You’ll find that your good deeds can protect me”]) to the rousing rock refrain of “Il genio” (“The Genius”) dedicated to Oscar Wilde, and the cinematic rock of “La seduzione” (“Seduction”). There is the moving “Catastrofe,” a very sweet reflection on “com’è facile perdere la dignità” (“how easy it is to lose one’s dignity”), the surprising “Giacomo eremita” (“Jack the Hermit”), almost grunge-like in the way it recalls Screaming Trees. An absolute gem, and a synthesis of the poetic and musical power of Godano and Marlene, is “Osja, amore mio” (“Osja, My Love”), in which Godano lends his voice to Nadia Mandel’štam, wife of the poet Osip or “Osja”, a victim of the great Stalinist purges, in a heartbreaking crescendo that illuminates the darkness of a crushing solitude. Nadia learned all of Osja’s verses by heart in order to save the work of a great poet from destruction, but also to keep her beloved alive and close, within her own voice:
Ogni tua immagine
ogni tua parola pregevole
ogni verso e ogni miracolo
della tua maestà poetica
imparerò, ooh
Osja, amore mio
forse tornerai
e io non ci sarò più
se mi senti dimmi dove sei
(Every image of you
every precious word of yours
every verse and every miracle
of your poetic majesty
I will learn, ooh
Osja, my love
maybe you will return
and I will no longer be here
if you can hear me tell me where you are)
A heartbreakingly beautiful song with a sweetly martial intro, it is the magnificent chiaroscuro portrait of an extraordinary woman and the perfect synthesis of literary and musical sensitivity achieved by the Piedmontese band, which in the meantime has produced two additional albums, the last of which (Karma Clima in 2022) is a concept album that primarily addresses climate change. Full of rarefied energy, with analog synths, orchestrations and piano in the foreground, it is a mix of sweetness and anguish, a “sound of anger,” paraphrasing the title of Cristiano Godano’s beautiful book (Il Saggiatore, 2024), expansive and reflective. And it is the proof that the band has always known how to (re)question itself, managing to create a multifaceted, atypical and courageous artistic world, an exemplary mix of light and darkness. Above all, returning to Russell’s initial quote, Karma Clima is the confirmation of that flow: if one of the band’s characteristics has always been the ability to blend, along with the qualities already listed, an extraordinary instinct for intimacy with the ability to relate to a world that, light years away from any trace of so-called “activism” or “combat rock,” knows and has always had the courage to take a stand. Albums like Nella tua luce and Karma Clima are, in different ways, the most successful proof of this ability.
Thus, despite the apparently reluctant attitude of Godano and his associates, it is not difficult to find many examples over the years of times that Marlene Kuntz has elegantly taken a stand; with the selection of places where they have always played, the collaborations, artistic choices such as setting to music “Hanno crocifisso Giovanni” (“They Crucified John”) from a poem by Lea Ferranti (on Materiale resistente [Resistant Material], a CD celebrating 50 years of resistance), or the cover of “Bella Ciao,” once again a duet with Skin, accompanied by a video shot in Riace (at the time when the mayor Mimmo Lucano and his integration project were violently attacked by then Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini). Much like the great Nabokov who, reluctant and caustic towards any type of political exhibitionism, answered those who asked him what the “message” of his works was with “Message? I’m not a postman, I don’t carry messages.” And yet with his literature, with his books he was indeed able to narrate the world around him, transforming it into a world apparently detached, one “of his own.” Marlene also does the same extraordinarily well with their now mature balance between the personal and the universal. Unfortunately, Marlene Kuntz has lost their drummer Luca Bergia, who died prematurely a few months after the release of Karma Clima, the first album in which he had not played. Between tours, various projects, collaborations, soundtracks and experiments, the band’s journey continues to remain coherent and ever evolving.
[1] Cristiano Godano, Nuotando nell’aria, La Nave di Teseo, 2019, p. 15.
[2] Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, Penguin Putnam, 2000, p. 5.