Lost and Found 10 – Burn reason burn: punk and mental health

In episode 10 of Lost and Found we discover three punk albums about mental health

For some time now I had been cherishing the idea of also writing an episode of Lost and Found, the Radio Punk column that invites people to discover, or rediscover, some more or less recent albums. However, I was looking for a trace, a red thread that would link the records to be talked about. Mentally going through my personal list of records that for one reason or another deserve to be listened to at least once in a lifetime, three records jumped out at me, linked by a common topic: mental health. Different countries, different languages, different musical styles, different approaches to the topic. The topic is sensitive, but the three bands manage to address it with lucidity and a pinch of (self)irony.

Manovalanza – Anancasmi (2017)

anancasm sing (pl.: anancasms) symptomatic behavior of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder: the subject cannot fail to perform certain actions or have certain thoughts. From ananke, inescapable fate in ancient Greek, in Latin translated as necessitas. The term thus refers to the inevitability of the obsessive acts performed by individuals with these disorders.

The dictionary entry explains exactly what the cryptic title of the concept album by the historic Tuscan band means. Fast and direct skacore to draw attention to the very widespread obsessive-compulsive disorders, which sometimes go unnoticed, sometimes are cause for ridicule, and in any case cause suffering in those affected. The disorders described in the songs seem extreme, but the band assures that they really exist, and this exaggeration is a way of exorcising the discomfort with irony. The protagonist of “Vestiti usa e getta” (Disposable Clothes) dislikes contact with people so much that he wears clothes only once because they are “contaminated” by someone else’s touch.

Your touch is lethal to my clothing.

I know this leaves you dismayed

But it is enough to touch this sweater of mine

That its end is inside the bin

People unfortunately don’t want to understand

How for years I must suffer.

The one of “Mondo liscio” (Smooth World) fears anything that interrupts the continuity of matter, from the pole he cannot dodge to the division between tiles.

I want to modify matter

In order to go through it

I want the world the way I like it

I don’t conform to tiles

I want a smooth surface without squares.

After all, raise your hand if you have never paid attention to the tiles and steps you step on. Don’t you find that “Odio le mattonelle!” (I hate tiles!) extremely liberating?

Justin(e) – 06 72 43 58 15 (2017)

The title of the album is a real phone number that, as explained in the song with the same name, you can dial to leave messages: ask for explanations about lyrics, recommend a book or a movie, tell about a problem or simply vent.

Not all the songs on the album are about mental health, but this is one of the recurring topics in the lyrics throughout the French punk rock band’s discography (cultured and refined punk rock, à la Guerilla Poubelle to be precise), along with socio-political content and historical and philosophical references. All these topics are intimately linked; in fact, psychiatric disorder is described primarily in its use by power as a social stigma and as a pretext for marginalization and repression.

What to do with all these marginal and deviant people?

And how to pass

Horror as a cure?

How to chain them differently from now on

To their shame, to their guilt,

To new punishments?

(Brûle raison brûle)

The album also features a song dedicated to Frantz Fanon, the Martinique-born French psychiatrist and philosopher who fought against colonialism and author, among other things, of Black Skin, White Masks, an essay on the devastating effects of racism on the human psyche.

How does your empire force me to see myself,

Miserable military colonial psychiatry?

Will I be, to you, barely an animal,

Inferior, ridiculous, childish and sick?

(Frantz Fanon – 1915-1961)

Call me Malcolm – I was broken when you got here (2018)

The album deals, as does virtually the entire discography of the band (whom we interviewed some time ago), with depression, told in the first person with a typically (and delightfully) British humor. The songs, interspersed with a persuasive female voice inviting people to relax, a parody of classic self-help audios, describe the moods of a depressed person with a cheerful ska-punk rhythm that creates a striking contrast to the content of the lyrics. The protagonist closes in on himself in the grip of his inner voices and seems unwilling to seek help, and even sessions at the therapist have no effect.

I’m losing my head

And I can’t control the voices

So I hole up in bed

But my sanity shreds.

(Inside Out)

Then every week

We talk

I can’t stop thinking

That I’m not waving

Cause I think I’m sinking

(In Treatment)

The only glimmer of light comes from “nameless friends,” those faces of the scene we often see at concerts who share attitude and ideals with us.

I’m broken but I fucking love this scene.

We got our friends

Count’em 1, 2, 3, go!”

(All My Nameless Friends)

The album ends with the usual voice advising people to listen to the record again if it has not had the desired therapeutic effect. Either way, it is easy to feel like pressing play again…

Elvira Cuomo

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