Alternative rock in the 2020s has found itself in a position many genres can only dream of: it is free. The commercial pressure is gone, the charts have shifted to other formats, and what remains is a territory of the committed — people who pick up their instruments for the sake of the music, accepting listeners and streaming numbers as a bonus, if they happen to come. And it is precisely in this space that albums worth listening to appear: made with patience, with experience, and with an understanding of why the act of recording exists in the first place. Valerio Montelatici — Roman, guitarist, songwriter — belongs entirely to this space for expression.

Born in 1978, in a city that raises people with a sense of the eternal and the nonlinear, he followed a path well known to rock musicians of his generation: a teenage guitar, first chords, first riffs — and the inevitable next step in the form of his own band. Hang Loose, a group of friends united by a love of rock and the desire to play loud and play for real, existed until 2006. Over those years — numerous live shows, several demos, an official EP, Set on Fire (2005). It is exactly this kind of school that shapes musicians who go on to know how to command a room, feel the dynamics, and understand how sound works in a real physical space.

And then came the period that occurs in the biography of any serious artist: the time when you stop playing for others and start figuring yourself out. When you listen, when you think your way deeper into songs more than you play them. When you accumulate. Fourteen years of silence — and in 2020, Valerio returned with his debut solo album, My Inspiration. The comeback was made. With his second album, Are we happy, it became clear: this is the moment Valerio Montelatici‘s sound has fully come into its own.

The question posed in the title is compelling in itself. “Are we happy?“ — a phrase that is at once quiet and bold. It demands an honest look at where you are right now and whether you are content with that place. The nine tracks that follow this question are arranged with the logic and discipline of a mature artist: The album’s concept is black and white: power and tenderness, drive and reflection, rock energy and lyrical depth. Everything coexists in balance, and that balance is deliberate.

The first thing that catches the ear is the sound. Professional and spacious. The guitars deserve special attention: alive, full of character, carrying that measure of imperfection that makes rock — rock. The vocals are woven into the instrumental fabric — on equal terms, inside the sound. This is the signature of someone who spent years on stage and knows exactly how music should sound when it is real.

It is essential to pay attention to the title track Are we happy, which opens the album with intelligence. Valerio sets the pace: we have time, there is nowhere to rush, let us begin in a human way. There is maturity felt in this decision. Young artists often open their albums with the loudest track — to immediately draw attention to themselves (whether this works is of course another question). Here a different path is chosen: atmosphere first, then everything else.

Dangerous — and here comes the thunder, rock in its purest essence. Powerful electric guitars, the drive of an arena concert, an epic sound that literally seizes the space around the listener. Classic rock energy at its finest.

Get Out of My Way really stands out on the album — my personal favourite. A track that embodies the very reason people come to alternative rock in the first place. The guitar riffs here are the essence of the song, its spine and its soul. They groove. They hold. They set the mood from the opening note and carry it through to the last. With Get Out of My Way, you want only one thing — to listen and sway, surrendering to the boundless rock sound. These are the kinds of tracks that stay in your memory for a long time.

In Front of Your Eyes is an entirely different story, and in that contrast lies the whole point. After several powerful pieces, Valerio takes a step back and breathes. Light guitars, a gentle rhythm, air inside the arrangement — it all comes together into a warm rock ballad that reveals the artist from a completely different angle. Here he is a songwriter at his desk, writing something personal and in no hurry whatsoever. The lyrical side of Valerio is clearly every bit as strong as the energetic one — the sixth track proves it beyond question.

Then there is also Stop the Time, which continues the trajectory, adding depth and atmosphere. The longest track on the album, it sounds light yet emotionally rich. A song that reveals itself anew with every listen: you come back to it and find a detail you had missed before.

The End is the closing track, and it is chosen perfectly. A gentle melancholy, a tender and warm ballad that leaves an aftertaste. The kind that only follows truly good music: the album is over, yet you sit in silence for a while longer. That is exactly how albums that truly mean something should end.

Are we happy is the album of a mature musician who has lived long enough to allow himself calm, and who loves music enough to play it openly, with all its rough edges. Across these nine tracks, you can hear the experience of Hang Loose — live performances, a real stage, an intuitive understanding of how sound travels through space. You can hear years of searching and reflection. And you can hear a voice — his own, recognisable, distinct.

Can one be critical? Of course. The album, for all its cohesion, at times holds too confidently to its own boundaries. Montelatici knows his strengths and works on proven ground — solidly, confidently, professionally. He has mastered that ground so thoroughly that you find yourself wanting to see him one day step beyond it: take a risk with form, add complexity to his structures, let something genuinely unpredictable into his sound. That said, this is curiosity about the future rather than a complaint about the present. Are we happy is a complete, unified statement in which every track holds its place, and to remove any one of them would mean disrupting the architecture of the whole.

Valerio Montelatici poses a question in the album’s title and leaves it open. A direct answer is absent — and there is maturity in that, too. The answer is hidden in the music itself, in its dynamics, in the transitions from the thunder of Dangerous to the stillness of The End, in the confidence with which Valerio allows himself both to shout and to whisper on a single record. A person capable of writing music like this surely knows something important about what it means to be alive. And he shares that knowledge — generously, openly, through nine tracks that speak for themselves.

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