English Version: Yes Daddy Yes – Senza Religione (Urtovox, 2012)

Italian mainstream popular music has always been quite songwriters-oriented. It is not surprising that this trend has not extinguished yet. However, songwriting (or “cantautorato”) is enriched in the 2010s with noise, synth and raw vibe, providing both quite fascinating lyrics and catchy music. One example is Yes Daddy Yes, an Italian band that with its debut “Senza Religione” joins the group of the Italian bands to check out. What Yes Daddy Yes actually do it mixing such themes with “cantautorato” and noise punk with Wavves-esque surf tunes (“Chirurgo”). In “Senza Religione” synths meet pop music and country, with the same ease they interact with country (“My Memory”). There is quite a sensitive gap between twee pop, electronic features and garage guitars, usually leading pounding drums (“A Caccia di Iene”, ”Farsi il Karate”, “Kyselac”). Pulp, garage and soft melodies coexist in an album, that finds a real cohesion point in its lyrics. From songwriters like Lucio Battisti and Franco Battiato to the contemporary Dente and Paolo Benvegnù, what they exploited is the lack of musicality of Italian language. Being less “musical”, its most striking feature is the poetic side, and the mixing and matching of different registers in such a casual way. Therefore Yes Daddy Yes provide some really fascinating lyrics, which somehow can be defined as urban poetry, a range of sarcastic and polemic topics that are now one of the most characteristic aspects of Italian spoken music (Massimo Volume, Luci della Centrale Elettrica). There are also some examples in English language: “The souls of birds/banging on the windows/who gets the carbon first/and this could be a town” (“My Memory”). If you fancy exploring the urban side of Italian indie rock, Yes Daddy Yes can satisfy you in both ways: either you understand the lyrics or not, its explosive mix will for sure catch our attention.