I can’t believe it’s time to say goodbye again
I can’t believe I’ve tossed my life away
I can’t believe ‘vrything can end so suddenly
I feel alone, the world breaks down on me
Messiness strides boldly toward their debut album, due later this year through Tarla Records and StoneFree Records, with the stunning new single Fatally. The track bursts forth as a psychedelic Britpop-inflected dive into addiction’s raw, recurring truths —a relentless spiral of empty promises and inevitable letdowns, rendered with startling clarity by Sicilian polymath Max Raffa and his adept ensemble. Fatally serves as an incisive commentary on the futility woven into addiction’s relentless repetitions. Messiness delivers an articulate, lush, and unsettling exploration of life’s contradictions, where beauty is forever entangled with ruin.
Messiness synthesizes Raffa’s eclectic background as composer, sociologist, and writer into a kaleidoscope of artistic pop, psychedelic flourishes, and celestial rock. Accompanied by Rosario Lo Monaco’s fluid guitars, Filippo La Marca’s shimmering keyboards, Giovanni Calella’s sturdy basslines, and Luca Anello’s rhythmic intricacies, the band spins a seductive web inspired by luminaries ranging from Primal Scream, Kula Shaker, and Gong, to Brian Eno and Talking Heads…all spiced with Mediterranean folk undertones.
Fatally resonates as a bright dirge, draped in bittersweet Mellotron textures, serving as both a postcard and an indictment from the twilight of the ’60s dreamscape. Conceived in Liverpool, the song traverses the shadowlands of substance dependency, born from a poignant encounter with someone freshly emerged from rehabilitation’s sterile grasp. Raffa, attuned to the poignant paradoxes of addiction, deftly captures the hyper-awareness and emotional estrangement that accompany such compulsive cycles.
“I penned this while I was living in Liverpool, right after sharing a few pints with this lad I met down the local,” says Max Raffa. “He’d just gotten out of the therapeutic community. Fatally is a harrowing introspection on addiction, rehabilitation, and the crushing weight of time’s inescapable forward march. It is a song about being caught in a cycle that simultaneously promises redemption and assures failure.”
Listen to Fatally below and order here.
The band released two earlier singles: Previous Life and Feature With A Rapper.
Previous Life is bouyant psychedelia, an interrogation of nostalgia’s internal contradictions. The song exposes the futility of retreating into an imagined past, revealing that such a past is, by definition, uninhabitable. The impulse to escape is simultaneously an acknowledgment of entrapment…the longing for a life beyond structure, obligation, and meaning ultimately leads not to liberation, but to negation.
Feature with a Rapper erupts as an electrifying blend of hard psych rock infused with Mediterranean warmth, propelled by a dizzying array of folk instruments, flower-punk echoes, and even some rap. Initially presented as a tongue-in-cheek narrative about an artist chasing industry recognition, the track soon unfolds into a sharp critique of creative authenticity in the digital era. Its intense, kinetic energy captures the frantic struggle of independent musicians navigating an environment where visibility overshadows talent, and credibility is traded as currency. Playful yet incisive, the song’s explosive dynamics and biting irony deliver both an exhilarating journey and an uncompromising industry critique.
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