They learned how to make noise long before they made a name for themselves. Little Pieces of Marmelade – Daniele “DD” Ciuffreda and Francesco “Frankie Wah” Antinori – exploded in 2020 through X Factor Italy, as part of Manuel Agnelli’s (Afterhours) team, where they took second place. From that experience a lasting collaboration was born: first their self-titled debut album, then Ologenesi in 2022, produced by Agnelli himself, which led them to play with him both live and in the studio. Back in their hideout in the Marche region (Italy), the two decided to wipe the slate clean and start again from noise, working in complete freedom.
From that isolation came Mexican Sugar Dance, a self-produced, feverish album built on contrasts. The garage ferocity of Family Therapy opens the curtain on a visceral, gritty sound, soon warped by the fuzzy lyricism of Fame and the funk-psychedelic soul of Love, swaying between ’70s warmth and punk instinct. The landscape grows darker with Doomy, slowing into Sabbathian sludge, while Q new and Path of Glory dive headfirst into grebo. At the album’s core, the dreamy keys of Sniffing Stars recall Supertramp before derailing into a psych vortex worthy of the early Flaming Lips, while the muddy melancholy of Sad Funk feels like an unintentional homage to Verdena. You can hear Brainiac, a glam-fuzz edge of Ty Segall, and the freedom of the best outsiders.
The result is raw, crooked, excessive – a controlled chaos, a psych-rock crossover that looks back to the ’90s dialogue between the US and UK, trying to recapture that freshness and jam-like spirit in a personal, visceral, and contemporary key, where every idea explodes before it settles. More laboratory than album, more instinct than form, but always driven by the hunger to reject formulas and clichés. Mexican Sugar Dance is a noisy construction site – a record that fails, dares, and, because of that, truly lives.