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Hot Gossip - You Look Faster When You Are Young

The Italian trio have given us a track by track guide of their new album.

Italian trio Hot Gossip released their new album 'You Look Faster When You Are Young’ this week, and for all those who have rushed out to buy it already the band have given us a track by track guide (and for those who haven't, you can buy it here).

1. 'Everybody Else'
I think I wrote this song after having a shower, not the whole song but the main theme. Then I spent some time with the others to build a song around it in our rehearsal room. In the past months, on tour, and after the video came out, I realized that the song has various interpretations, and I like it when everybody has a different interpretation of my lyrics.

2. 'And Again'
This is the first song we wrote for the new record. We weren't really trying to write a new song, but it came out. It was after we decided to let Sergio (the new bass player) in the band. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon in April in Sergio's old flat. The song came out in 10 minutes, the whole of it. I didn't like it too much at the beginning, so we left it there, waiting. After 6-7 months while in the process of writing new songs, we listened to it again and we all loved it, so we decided it'd be on the album. Today it's one of my favorites.

3. 'At Night'
At some point I was really thinking of having a song with a different guitar sound than the usual Hot Gossip style, so I tried to be more folk-ish and this three chords were the first thing that came up. I thought it was interesting, and I brought the initial part to the others, and together we built the song around it. It was sort of a long process on this one, but at the end we like the bittersweet feeling you have with this poppy start and with the paranoid/dark riffs on the second half.

4. 'Fast In The Rain'
Sometimes Sergio and I like to switch bass and guitar, and this song came out in one of those moments. Sergio improvised this guitar riff, I thought that the riff was pure vitriol, so I put a bassline on it. The song came out pretty fast. The lyrics are about going out in the city by bike at night mashing as if there's no tomorrow.

5. 'Call The Rangers'
I was probably trying to do something poppy-ironic-innocent with my guitar and I came accross this riff with the 7ths. I added a bridge and a choir and the song was done. The others liked it. This song is about people who don't care about being successful at all costs, or competitive, but this lack of ambitions is considered weakness, a malformation in a normal person's behaviour, something evil that must be punished.

6. 'You Better Know'
This one came out in another moment where I was on bass, and Sergio came out with this three chords. Initially it was just three/four chords and we worked a little on the reiteration/repetition of some parts of these chordsin a way you can hear in the recorded version of song. This is another song that talks about the same guy of call the rangers, in a more dramatic way. Call the rangers is irony, this is drama. The boy is at
the cimitery in front of his parents' graves, telling them that he is giving up, that he tried hard to be what it needs to be a normal person today, but it's too difficult for him, for his sense of justice for his absence of competitiveness, lack of ambitions, he is giving up.

7. 'You Name It'
it's the final instrumental part of the previous song.

8. 'What We Are'
It's kind of our version of Edwin Starr's 'War' (God I love that song, also the Bruce Springsteen version). It was written during the "war on terror". If you think of it since we are born, we've been constantly surrounded by wars, and our goverments (European, North American) were taking part of it sending out troops. If you think about it, war in 2009 doesn't make sense. Not even in 1969, so it is our own duty, to make our own mind up about wars, expecially if our governments are involved.

9. 'Little Secrets'
I completely forgot when this came out. The only thing I remember is that I worked on it a bit and there you go. It kind of sounds like I was thinking of Rocket From The Crypt a lot back then.

10. 'Cops With Telephones'
It's another "ironic" song, it's a third person talking to this typical euro-dandy type, trying to mess with his mind. He would protect himself by calling the cops-with-telephones.

11. 'Father'
It's based on a blusey vocal line, and it came out during a stormy night in Milan. It talks about this very old father, hoping that his spiritual and affective legacy will be enough for his son's future life. When I saw "Gran Torino", a few months ago, I realized that the movie could be one sublime interpretation of the song.