Rave On! Radio Days

People say that putting the question is answering it, but it baffles me at times hearing those perfect pop songs, that it is still possible to find new combinations of notes and chords that make up a perfect pop song in 2021. Radio Days certainly managed to do so. From The Beatles to Big Star and from Fountains of Wayne and Weezer it is only a small step to Radio Days, there are decades in between the bands but perfection is reached in their respective songs.

Rave On! is one of Buddy Holly better songs of course but he's not Radio Days' main influence. (Okay, there is 'The Long Goodbye'.) For that we go to The Beatles. It's that simple.

The band's name is spot on. I have a very early childhood memory of a mysterious ladder that went up to where? I was not allowed to come near. Some years later, one day a hatch was open at the top of the ladder and I could see the blue sky through the hatch. I went up and there was the daughter of the family that we used to live upstairs from and I was staying with for a while. She was sitting with her back against a chimney with tv antenna's all around her. She had a little transistor radio with her on the roof, listening to Radio Veronica. She got a fright seeing me on the flat roof, but she let me sit next to her, listening to the hits. I can't remember what we heard, unfortunately. I was probably too excited from being on the roof of the tenement block, finally.

Why am I telling this? Because it could have been a Radio Days song. Although a song like this hadn't been made yet, for all sense and purposes it could have been one. Radio Days takes all the elements of 60 pop hits and mixes it with influences from bands that followed the 60s, like the two mentioned above. So the guitars, bass and drums are firmer, played in ways that the 60s predecessors hadn't mastered yet, not to speak of the recording technique. When a Radio Days song were to come out of a 60s transistor radio's little speaker? Bingo.

Radio Days is a trio from Milan in Italy consisting of Dario Persi, vocals/guitar, Mattia Baretta, bass/backing vocals and Paco Orsi, drums/percussions. Persi and Baretta together created some divine harmonies on Rave On! The two men know how to construct harmonies alright. They certainly are half of the attraction on this album. Now Italy is not the country I expected this kind of music to come from, but then it's not the first surprise from my favourite southern European holiday country since the start of this blog. Pop simply doesn't come much better.

Wout de Natris

You can listen to and order Radio Days here:

https://radiodays.bandcamp.com/album/rave-on

or listen to our Spotify Playlist to find out what we are writing about:

https://open.spotify.com/user/glazu53/playlist/6R9FgPd2btrMuMaIrYeCh6?si=KI6LzLaAS5K-wsez5oSO2g