Notes - The music blog
Notes: Exploring Sheffield: Marta on... Italy's newest musical export
Every Wednesday, Marta brings a slice of the Mediterranean to Sheffield to see if the music scene really differs at all.
I admit it, although I am not proud of it: last week I betrayed Sheffield to go to Leeds.
So now I don’t have a gig to talk about, for I spent the whole time moving from one shop to another to then drink at least four cocktails in a row in a bar called Smokestock.
(Ok, I know I shouldn’t use this space for advertisement and even less to advertise places in Leeds, but they were amazing. Best cocktails ever, and I have a long experience with cocktails, trust me).
Anyway, back to music and to Sheffield. I came back to find a package from Italy with some survival kit stuff and a cd. That cd, an EP called Most Unlikely Often Happens, is very, very good.
The band’s name is Scrabble and they are from Turin, my city. Although I had never listened to their music, I was familiar with the name of the band because they are friends of friends of friends and because the singer, Lorenzo De Masi, was my schoolmate in elementary and middle school. Now he calls himself Larry. Just as Carlo, Pietro and Carlo again, the other band members, are now known as Charlie, James and Lax. You just can’t help it: English is cooler when it comes to music.
Also, from the day I started to write about English music here in Sheffield, I hadn’t heard a sound so English as Scrabble. They might be Italian by birth, but their musical heart hails from Albion. Lorenzo’s voice, I mean Larry’s, should come from some foggy suburb in London.
Their EP was produced in England and although I am not sure they would have a market in Italy (where ‘indie’ English music is by definition very very indie), when it bends to pop like in their case, I bet they can make it on the island. They’re definitely talented enough and Most Unlikely Often Happens is something you want on your mp3 player the minute you start to listen to it. It’s made for consumption.
So without further ado, I am mostly proud to present them to you, not only because they deserve it but because I am curious to see what proper English folk think of Anglo-indie produced in Italy. They are good.
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