Black Tail is an indie rock band from Rome and Latina (Italy): Cristiano Pizzuti (Voice, Guitar, Synths), Simone Sicamanna (Guitar), Cristina Marcelli (Bass) and Roberto Bonfanti (Drums). The idea, and the name of the project, came out of a walk in the woods right outside Boston in 2013. A close encounter with a black-tailed deer, and a bunch of songs written while traveling. One of the songs is a demo recorded with a small portable device in Back Bay, dedicated to Elliott Smith, and presented during a short acoustic set on national radio station Radio Rai1. Three records (Springtime, 2015, One Day We Drove Out Of Town, 2017 and You Can Dream It In Reverse, 2020) released for the indie labels Mia Cameretta and Lady Sometimes, filled with indie-americana, jangle textures, and dreamy guitar arpeggios. The soundscape interlaces and changes, from sunny ballads to a shadowy restlessness. The musical vocabulary is influenced by Wilco, Sparklehorse, Teenage Fanclub, Yo La Tengo, Elliott Smith, all mixed up in an eclectic ecosystem made of handmade drawings and indie rock songs, slight folk roots and a rather lo-fi slackerish attitude. A personal narration of secluded worlds and introspective gazes. Wide Awake on Beds of Golden Dreams, which was recorded at VDSS Recording Studio by Filippo Passamonti between Dec 2022 and Sept 2023, is the band’s fourth full length and will be out on February 23rd (MiaCameretta Records).

What They Say: “While everything changes, half of you stays where you want to stay, and the other half needs to find new places. This song is about different people, all
mixed into the same song. Isn’t it all about this? Aren’t we different people all
compressed into the same story?“

“You were dancing to a song, then the music changed, and you kept dancing the
same dance. Just because you wanted. And even if the steps are all wrong, you
don’t care. This is a “who cares” kind of song. This is also the kind of song
about a person and a record. The person isn’t named Josephine. The record is.“

Their Mixtape: “I’ve started compiling this list, including all the most representative songs forme. Then, almost right away, and apparently with no reason, I’ve recalled a dinner we had in Boston some years ago. I was renting a room in Cambridge, and the owner came to ask me if I was ok to give a party during my stay. “Cool, when?” and she smiled back at me: “Tonight”—and damn, it’s been fantastic— there was a full band playing forrò in the bow-window. Right before the party, one of the guests, a local cook studying alternative cuisine, kindly offered to prepare us the dinner, an incredibly delicious one, I must say, made essentially of ingredients personally handpicked with extreme skill in the gardens of the
abandoned houses around the neighborhood. “There are lost treasures growing in the cracks of abandoned places, and we don’t even recognize them anymore.” That made me think about my relationship with the indie and underground labels back in the days when this travel into alternative music began. So, I started over again. From the music collectives, especially the French and Belgian ones, in the early 2000s. I didn’t mean to put together a nostalgic mixtape, though. I was rather trying to understand my today’s listenings through the path of all those early listenings that formed my approach to independent music. I’m just letting the ghost of 60+ songs evaporate to see what’s underneath. After all, I didn’t remember anything about what we had on our plates that night in Cambridge; what I remember is how that dinner changed my way of looking around. Now, even if those underground musicians have been scraped from the final mixtape, I like to think that they’re the ones who really compiled it. And I know, you might say this intro is totally irrelevant to the following selection, but in a moment when things look too fast even to add some kind of context, the story of what kept me engaged for a couple days looked like a pretty unpredictable act, just like stepping over the fence of an abandoned garden to pick the dinner.” (Cristiano Pizzuti)

Bill Ryder-Jones – Two to Birkenhead

When West Kirby County Primary was released, we were recoding our second
album, and from the first listening, it sounded like the kind of album that makes
you think, “Damn, I would like to be even remotely capable of such brilliant
songwriting.” The clarity of the guitars interplaying, the dynamics, and the rich
melodic bouquets are ready to explode. And that voice. You might think of this
record as the place you would go when things get dark and you need to feel
good. Two to Birkenhead throws that slanted intro directly into my heart.

Bill Callahan – Jim Cain

For those who know me, this is not a secret: I have a thing for Bill Callahan, ever
since Red Apple Falls crashed into me. It is still one of my favorite ten albums
I’d bring to a desert island. To let you understand how irrationally I love that
record—and it might sound weird—I have those three words tattooed on my
arm. I’ve kept I Was a Stranger on the mixtape until the very end because it
turns 27 still shining brightly. I wanted to honor it, but then I’ve decided to stay
true to my resolution, focusing on more recent listenings. And here we are. This
song has the perfect sound; the drums pierce my heart, while that swarm of
strings comes to finish me off. It’s the sound of the late summer evenings along
the freeway I drive through when coming back home from the rehearsals, while
the sunset devours the fields like a peaceful wildfire.

Hand Habits – Book On How to Change

Since the story took a visionary twist, we might as well get completely lost in
the charming arpeggios and the transportive voice of Hand Habits. It’s difficult
to say which of their albums carried me away most. While their creativity and
excellent skill flew to irrigate the soil of dozens of albums you probably love as
much as I do, it’s in their personal works that an uncommon talent emerges
strong and pure: the ability to put the skills at the service of a rare sensitivity
for the atmosphere and the moods. Not to mention the touch of stunning
songwriting.

Kevin Morby – Five Easy Pieces

You’re on the couch, the TV on mute. An old movie plays, and you start writing
a song. Is it a score of the dazzling moments of your not-so-dazzling teens? Is
it a memory from ten years ago? Is it last week? Who cares. You were in the
backseat of your dad’s car, listening to Lennon’s Jealous Guy, and just a
moment later, you’re at the cinema—the moment when everybody starts singing
to Tiny Dancer in that old Cameron Crowe’s movie. And then again, now you’re
driving your own car, Otis Redding on the radio, and you’re just one of the lights
on the tail that slips in the riverbanks of a sleepy town. How can you be this
imaginative through straightforward language? How can you deal with the
liturgical repetition while keeping everybody’s attention so well? Oh damn,
Kevin Morby, how many tricks have you up your sleeve?

Cate Le Bon – Are You With Me Now?

Most of my strongest bonds with music, recently, are related to travels and
festivals. I mean, what’s more magic of something that allows you to travel
while you’re at home, and makes you feel home while you’re traveling? Is the
perfect match. Cate Le Bon is part of this sublimation process. And Sweet
Baboo, to be honest, who I discovered at a festival in Wales, beating into a
piece of bara brith – which rendered definitely immortal the whole thing.
Years after I’ve met them both playing on the same stage in Portugal, on Crab
Day’s tour. There was no bara brith, but – believe me – it’s been an incredible
set. When they started playing this song – I remember it clearly – I started to
slide towards the center of the Earth, down the helter-skelter of memories.
Blueberries and Welsh cakes included.

Conor Oberst – Cape Canaveral

As probably for the large majority of us, my approach to Conor Oberts starts
with Bright Eyes. It passes through the constellations of Saddle-Creek and
Team Love—that for years dispensed dozens of records to discover—and it
ends with his solo albums. If I had to choose among his latest solo works, I’d
probably pick Ruminations (c’mon, there isn’t a way to resist a song that puts
together Mamah Borthwick, Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater, Taliesin, and
Tokyo’s Imperial’s Hotel). Though, without overthinking, Cape Canaveral is
simply my favorite one. It draws, in a sweet-painful way, the feeling—muffled
and overwhelming—of being a kid from the 80s. That disharmonious time
between the jagged specter of the Cold War and the sharp and definitive
memory of that silent puff over Cape Canaveral, 73 seconds after the
Challenger’s lift-off.

Big Thief – Certainty

I have to confess: Originally, my intention was to include something from Buck
Meek’s Two Saviors because it’s been one of my safe-heaven records in the
last few years. The story behind the production of that record is such a great
story to tell, although I won’t tell it. I hope this will encourage those of you who
might not know about it to search for both the album and the anecdote. Talking
about Big Thief, they are confirming, if it were ever needed, that this heavenly
creature is not just the sum of its components. There’s something deeper and
unfathomable in what they play. Ok, I’m not trying to state what’s the weight of
the soul, but here’s the thing: my certainty is that Big Thief is even bigger than
the astonishing resultant of their individual talents.

Andy Shauf – The Worst In You

The Party is the kind of record that not only would I never stop to listen to, but
it is also the perfect sample of well-made things I would bring if I had to go
door to door, trying to convince someone about how a record should be written.
I know, this sounds awkwardly Italo Calvino, but sometimes I think that the bond
we have with some of our favorite albums lies in the paradox around the perfect
emotional match you might feel and the sense of bewilderment you face
measuring your distance from the finishing line of your musical life: learning to
write and to play something with such grace.

Chad VanGaalen – Peace on the Rise

Many of you have probably noted that one of Andy Shauf’s The Party promo
videos was drawn and animated by Chad VanGaalen. I’m truly sentimental
about his music, not just because he dedicates his life to the two things I love
most in mine—music and design—but because he does both in a masterful
manner. His works, regardless of the creative sphere, reflect an intimate
feeling. A creature sat in the shadows, scanning the limits of the clearing. An
attitude I personally love. I would have included other Canadian artists such as
Julie Doiron and Phil Elverum, but the game of the mixtape is a cruel one. Also,
look at those beautiful animations in the video!

Asher White – Bedsong

Let’s imagine a universe dominated by different rules. Everything goes in every
direction: space, time, music, and history. Even better, imagine if your days
were self-aware and they started to pick colors and clothes autonomously.
Something that can be taken as a practical demonstration of how freedom and
creativity, in every manifestation or extent, can only be a virtue. Well, I don’t
know if I depicted any useful description of Asher White’s New Excellent
Woman. For sure, it hit me like a symphony played on my birthday. On the liner
notes, it reads that Asher wrote, recorded, and mixed her album using many
instruments—often damaged—found here and there at thrift stores or on
Craiglist. Could this be ignored by an Elephant 6 fan, compiling a mixtape
inspired by a dinner made by putting together wild plants from abandoned
gardens?

Girlpool – 123

One of the rules is that, at some point, there must be something unexpected in every
compilation. Let’s be clear: not in mine. Girlpool, especially after this record, is
something that I feel deeply rooted in this mixtape’s microcosm. They moved
far beyond the beginnings, turning that extraordinary early curiosity and
expressive freedom into a complex yet intriguing universe, layering
arrangements that reminded me of some of the bands I love from the LA scene.
When Hire was released, a few years after this record, it reminded me of Elliott
Smith. This talent to remind you of something just to make you realize that—no,
they don’t actually sound like anything else but themselves—is actually a great
gift.

Florist – If Blue Could Be Happiness

I’ve always been a Florist fan. I’ve always liked Emily Sprague’s solo albums too.
I like her incursions into the tangle of patch cables and feelings passing through
her eurorack (look for her ambient videos on the internet!). I once read an
interesting interview describing her home studio, her gear, and her workflow. All
the things she put together to track down her albums in her Brooklyn studio.
I’ve found the 20-year-old me tapping on my shoulder, saying, “Isn’t it the best
version of our dream?”. Nevertheless, this ain’t the reason why Florist is in my
music collection and in this mixtape. The reason why I like her music so much is
because she’s constantly on the lookout for beauty and depth. Life and
mystery. If Blue Could Be Happiness goes gently deep down like a ray of sun,
even into the darkest and most weary moments of a listener’s life, with the only
purpose of telling something about you that sounds clearer than your own
words. This record knows how to tell you about melancholy—that cheerfulness
that always chooses the wrong clothes. Ok, Emily Dickinson would beat me, but
you get the picture.

Fruit Bats – The Rock Doc

And I’m at the end of this selection with an artist that has its own galaxy in my
memories. For example, a night in a completely different Rome years ago, going
around in circles to find parking in San Lorenzo, where Fruit Bats and Vetiver
shared the stage, or the rainy day in Somerville during the Porch Fest with my
beloved friend Stacy. I was trying to keep the rain away from my coffee when I
ran into a record store. There I found the Record Store Day edition of The Glory
of Fruit Bats vinyl. I bought it together with Big Star’s Complete Columbia and a
record from Rod Stewart that I can’t recall. Besides the musical genius of Eric
Johnson, if you’re sensitive to the sound of the drums that only some records
have, especially the essential folk music ones, you will agree with me that the
kick is made to blow away the door of your heart. Not to talk about the guitars.
The fact that this song comes at the end of the mixtape brings us back to the
Cambridge apartment. The morning I was packing up to fly back home, I wrote
about the release of Absolute Loser by Fruit Bats. I’ve listened to it staring at
the funny tap in the bathroom, nicely improved with two sticky little eyes: a
chrome stegosaur, contemplating the water spinning and vanishing into the
black hole of the sink.

Wide Awake on Beds of Golden Dreams will be out on February 23rd on MiaCameretta Records. Look HERE for more information on Black Tail.