The first track from this album, "A
volte un istante di quiete" (thankfully, an instrumental), stands at the edge of classic Italian
prog, looking at the neo-prog that's to come (particularly in the duller midsection), but still holds its own. Unfortunately, by the second track
they go for the jump, and the results are as glossy as that cover.
Ironically, the title of the record ("maybe fireflies don't love each other anymore") always made me wonder if it could be a reference to Pasolini's famous article that expounded on the disappearance of fireflies as a symptom of the destructive modernization of Italian society (more specifically, of the socionature of its traditional ways of life); but if it were, it would seem to end up suggesting how classic prog had become an ever more escapist genre, resolving all social, political, even civilizational contradictions facing contemporary societies through a retreat into fantasy land (to where, clearly, multiple and renewed forms of denial continue to push us, expecting everything will simply work out, with no idea how); a land where the coming extinction of Lampyridae was more likely to be poetically framed as a newfound inclination for asexuality (maybe they just wanted to work on their inner insect selves) than as one more neglectful side-effect of catastrophically short-sighted anthropocentric planetary engineering.
As such, conceivable good intentions aside, with all its professionalism at the service of a nostalgic aesthetic (which can in itself feel redolent of a conflicting mix of artistic naivete and commercial savviness), this, like so many "prog" records of its time, showed that, for those who took an actually progressive view of musical creation (and maybe of its dialectical entanglement with social organization itself, while we're at it), punk or no punk, it was definitely time for a change.
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