Why the latest album of Generic Animal is the soundtrack of your life

You know when you are lying on the bed, with your feet on your pillow and your head dangling and looking at your room on the contrary, you start thinking about what happens, making mental films about existence, what's wrong and what's good, on what you do not have but simply do not want to get up from that bed and go to take it? This state of hypnosis, of suspension you have listening the last album of Generic Animal: EMORANGER. The nine traces of EMORANGER, product by Zollo for La Tempesta Dischi in collaboration with Bomba Dischi, are the perfect symbol of the life of anyone, whoever lives in today's world, needs to be alone sometimes, who loves the old scooter and suffers for badly ended stories, friends, lots of love and cursed nostalgia.

Meeting Luca Galizia, the voice and the face behind the project "Generic Animal", makes you realize how everything can happen by chance, for joke sometimes, and so then without "if" and "but" you find yourself arranging the strings of your guitar, singing a thought that at that moment was blowing in your head and so you find in your hands a single (or maybe a success).

Generic Animal faces today's world by caressing the today's world and, perhaps, this is the key of an album that smells of new and successful.

#1 We’re here for the presentation of your second album: EMORANGER. What can we expect? Why releasing a second album just a few months after your solo debut?

The way I write and create is always different. Last year I wrote an album in one month and then it took me two months to record it and six to release it. This time with Zollo it took us less than six months, since I asked him to be my roadie. Therefore, in ten months we created these songs and it was a sort of experiment. At the beginning we were like “Yes, let’s make these three songs together, and from them we will make also a mixtape”, other songs were created as a joke, so I feel like I’ve lost my virginity for the second time because these are my first proper lyrics. Scarpe (Shoes), for example, is a metaphor of a period of my life. The thought behind it was like “I want to write a song about this thing because it’s important for me, even if it’s superficial, but for me is fundamental, so I’ll do it.”

#2 Listening to this album, as well as your first one, it’s not easy to define your musical genre. There’s a range of different worlds that blend with lyrics everyone can relate to. Do you think you belong to a specific genre?

I always say emo-pop. Everything I create comes from many different inspirations, like every other musician. I use the word ‘emo’ because I want to refer to a specific imagery, maybe more aesthetic-wise. And the word ‘pop’… well everything now is pop, everything you want other people to listen to is pop. I don’t understand how ‘indie’ became a different branch: indie for me refers to a certain type of musician, with a peculiar style. In my music there’s a lot of R&B too, but I’ve always played merely emo music in emo bands.

Carlo Zollo: For me it’s the representation of what we enjoy and like, something that emerges naturally without having to think too much about it. It has all been quite spontaneous.

Generic Animal: When we decide to write a song together everyone weighs in. For example he decides to use my guitars, so it’s a flow of mine decisions and his decisions. The difference with the first album is that I’m in love with it, I like it, but remains a debut album so I don’t think it will be my best work: I feel like I can do so many things, I don’t want to stop now.

#3 So when people talk about Generic Animal as ‘emo’ and ‘punk’ do you agree? It’s like with The 1975, they’re often defined with these words, but not everyone is ok with it…

I think they’re super emo, but pop at the same time because they have a huge communication platform, they have something that appeals to a specific target and a specific audience, which makes them immediately pop. But we can’t say they’re not emo, but also funky, they’re a mix of different elements and the perfect example of what a good communication can do. In Italy it’s very difficult, especially if you’re an emerging artist like me. I consider myself a very quiet person, there are many things in this business that I don’t like, but I’m not here to hate but just to make my own music.

#4 Let’s talk about your colleagues: summer for you means writing and releasing new singles for the audience. What do you think of Calcutta and Carl Brave’s latest albums?

To be honest I didn’t have the chance to listen to them properly. Calcutta’s album contains both songs I like and others I don’t. Unlike the album he made with Franco, Carl’s new work is not very catchy for me. I can’t say ‘Wow, it’s beautiful’ or ‘Oh God I hate it’: it’s a record made for the radio stations, nice but not visionary.

#5 2018 has been a super busy year for you and your music. Are you going to relax now?

There are definitely more things to do. This project, born as a joke, allowed him to work with different artists, eventually involving me and this generated other ideas and projects.

Zollo: We’ve worked hard on Pretty Solero’s new album, very interesting.

#6 Do you guys work well together?

Yes, definitely. Everything is very “domestic”, we mainly create and record at his place.

Zollo: The entire album was made at home and it’s publicly released only now. It was all made between my house and my dropbox, my phone and his phone.

Generic Animal: This place we chose for the launch of the album, Legno, is the place where I used to print the first tees I designed. I used to work also with Jacopo, the guy who prints, so it's linke an house.