STAY HERE MY FRIENDS

Wish come from Rome and their roots date back to 1992. After some line up changes, many pauses and a long, painstaking work in their own studio, in 2019 the band finally self released a debut album entitled "Stay Here My Friends" with a line up featuring Piergiorgio Franceschelli (vocals), Giorgio Simonetti (guitars, bass, vocals), Salvatore Patti (keyboards) and Massimo Mercurio (drums). According to their website, this is a conceptual work revolving around the idea of "friendship as a true bulwark to withstand the bumps of our daily life" while the music is an interesting mix of classic rock and prog mainly drawing from seventies atmospheres although with a personal, modern touch. The cover is based on an original painting by the band's keyboardist Salvatore Patti and tries to give an idea of the musical content...

The dreamy opener 'Like A Yes' sets the atmosphere. It's a beautiful instrumental piece that sounds like a kind of tribute to the halcyon days of prog... The following 'Deep Wish' is darker and deals with regrets and memories you can't erase, words echoing and turning in circles that haunt you even in the middle of the night, hanging around like ghosts, driving you insane...

'Dancing With Myself' tells in music and words of the feeling of deep, desperate solitude that experiences a man living a wavering, waning, trembling present... Then it's the turn of 'Scrambed Eggs', a dreamy instrumental piece that alternates delicate, pastoral passages to electric diversions.

The long, complex 'Church' begins by the sound of an organ solo pattern and is about a religious, mystical crises where all the established values seem to crumble. The lyrics name many times the number seven that in numerology is considered the union of the spiritual world rooted in the Holy Trinity with the material world that is based on the four elements... 'Stay Here My Friends' closes the album describing friendship like a shelter in the rainy season, an antidote to the poisonous effects that everyday life can bring...

On the whole, a good album even if the vocal parts, in my opinion, are not always up to the task...