The Junks: Standing with the World's Outcasts and Renegades
Being a trio formed in 2023, we come from the outskirts of the decaying city of Rome, which itself is the periphery of a declining empire. We call ourselves The Junks because we are proud of being marginal, of standing with the world's outcasts and renegades. One of the songs on our album is indeed titled "Serial Loser". But "junks" are also light Chinese boats, and we think of rock music as an expression of discontent but also of the desire to be elsewhere: our music is nocturnal because it refuses, by sleeping, to participate in this world while dreaming of a better one.
Many of our songs talk about the night ("All Night Long", "Nell'immensa notte senza scampo") and the desire to disappear and stop feeling ("Don't Wanna Feel Anymore"). Each of us is a universe unto ourselves, and our music is the sound of these distant universes meeting. We have played together for several years in other bands and know each other very well. Therefore, we decided to create a group that would allow us to express our different musical personalities. One of the main characteristics of the band is the ability to range across different sound worlds, from post-punk to the Beatles, from grunge to electronic, to folk music. The compositional process starts from an individual or collective idea, which we then rework together to create something that satisfies everyone in a democratic and horizontal way. Our first album, titled Control and Abuse, was released in April 2024 by Pisces. It gathers songs we have written over the years and conveys the idea of a sound journey through different eras and sensations.
The predominant feature of our music is certainly intimacy ("My Little Boy", "Feel Lonely"), the expression of individual anxieties and fears, and loneliness. But we also believe in the revolutionary and political hope of a collective change, and so, even in disillusionment and despair, some of our songs sing of anger and the desire for a radical transformation of society, not just for us but also for nature and animals ("Happy Meal").
In the studio, we are a collective of multi-instrumentalists, and each of us contributed to the album in different ways, especially trying to let ourselves be inspired by the fun and the desire to experiment with different sounds and atmospheres. Many sound solutions recall the music of the '80s and '90s, such as new wave or Nirvana ("Control And Abuse", "The Wrong One"). Even those of us who did not live through that period feel an affinity with that music. Not out of nostalgia, but because we feel connected to a time when it was normal for music to oppose power, money, and conformity. We partake in the joy that unites all the trash thrown away by the social machine. Even the trash of history: if the present is dead, we look to the past to feel the life we miss.
For this reason, we dedicated a tribute to Leonard Cohen ("Can't Be Sad Like Leonard Cohen"): inspiration is not imitation, for us, our music is the music of the present. The way we sing and play must be different, it must always communicate our personal perspective. This is why, live, the songs from this album appear harsher, more intense, and rougher. We choose the path of direct communication; music, even when it talks about peace, must hit like a bullet.
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