Première: Catholic Block - "A New Spring"

Lo so, è appena cominciato l'autunno ma oggi qui a polaroid è un po' un inizio di primavera, e l'euforia nell'aria fa scintillare anche questo cielo grigio. C'è una nuova canzone fuori per Catholic Block, il progetto solista di Michele Tellarini dei nostri cari Qlowski (ne avevamo parlato quest'estate), e sono super felice di presentare qui sotto il nuovo video disegnato da Irene Montemurro. 

A New Spring è la canzone che chiude We Fail, l'esordio carico di post-punk sintetico e super lo-fi appena uscito in cassetta per Maple Death Records e forse ne rappresenta il vertice. È una canzone che mi ha steso al primo ascolto, con quel suo attacco un po' Deerhunter e un po' in apparenza svagato che si accende di tensione battuta dopo battuta. "I never hoped for something more", canta la voce di un personaggio che si scopre via via più coinvolto dentro un nuovo amore: "As my hands are not holding yours, I am lost in this world". Come possano "a cheap Casio keyboard, a £35 guitar and drum machines" scatenare tutto questo dramma è un prodigio che solo Michele saprebbe spiegare. 

L'ultima fatale strofa forse suona come un colpo di grazia, ma io credo che in realtà sia un perfetto e semplice omaggio alla bellezza di quel momento che insegui con tutte le tue forze e che continuerai a ricordare:

I tried to be young and I failed

We try, we search and destroy

We love, we try, we fail

Gli stessi versi vengono riprese dai disegni della Montemurro alla fine del video, ed è molto interessante la sua dettagliata spiegazione del "making-of":

«A New Spring was my first ever hand drawn animation. It’s about 4 min long although I drew "only" 540 frames for it (most of the clips repeat at least once), it took me about three months, from late June until early September. It’s all drawn with one mechanical pencil and a copious amount of leads. I had the whole set up in one corner of my room and I didn’t move it all summer.

I had been working on gouache and watercolour throughout lockdown, and had a few sheets of glassine and tracing paper for wrapping the artwork that I sold.

There was something quite pleasing about the different textures together, so I started making little books that combined the two.

In the same period of time Michele sent me the tracks for his new album asking for a short video for instagram, and when I heard A New Spring I instantly knew I wanted to make a full music video for it and could picture exactly how I would make it. 

I had already painted the background, it was inspired by the architecture in Lorenzetti’s last supper fresco in Assisi (I often drew from art books during lockdown).

I didn’t start with a clear plan or any sort of storyboard, I just started drawing and scanning as I was going along. Each clip I assembled and its interaction with the track inspired the next one coming, as I experimented with the possibilities of movement and rhythm that the previous clips almost accidentally had opened up for me.

I had drawn a scheme of the major turning points in the songs but that was about it.

You can definitely tell there’s an underlying sense of growth in how the animation is structured, and by the last minute I had  reached a point where I felt comfortable enough with the medium to  make a more openly narrative ‘episode’.

Apart from looking at Sienese painting, I rewatched a lot of anime openings to get inspiration for the movement and transitions, all very cheesy stuff from my childhood, from Sailor Moon and Creamy the Magic Angel to Doremi and Digimon and Tokyo Mew Mew and other Italian tv classics (there were looooads of  Japanese anime in Italian tv as I was growing up). 

It’s obviously a much more crude  and DIY attempt compared to what was achieved in those animations, but I fully embraced the sad/funny/nostalgic/grotesque aspects of my homage to the classics.

I also watched the whole of Downton Abbey while I was drawing the most repetitive bits, and pretty much didn’t listen to anything apart from A New Spring for the whole period of time.

I would play the song on my walks to the shops and sort of re-play the animation in my head   constantly until I knew exactly what I needed to do next.

The panda and the elephant are inspired by two incredible plastic brooches I bought from a vintage shop ages ago.»