The group “25/17” released the album “The Joy of Meetings and Partings”

The group “25/17” has released its eighth full-length album, “The Joy of Meetings and Partings.” It will be presented at concerts on December 9 at Moscow’s VTB Arena and December 16 at Sibur Arena in St. Petersburg. About the most lyrical album of Siberian rappers – Igor Gavrilov.

The most popular of the rap groups that continue to work on the territory of the Russian Federation, “25/17”, over its long career, has said many important words in its lyrics about the country in which they live. These were the words of adults and sober-minded people, and even in the last two years, when Russian rappers of different views were throwing around harsh phrases, “25/17” remained outside the opposing camps. “Both adherents of North Atlantic values ​​and turbo-patriots expect propaganda from us, expect us to lead people,” Andrei Bledny complained in an interview with Kommersant. Remaining in the thick of Russian events, the group refused to call anyone to any barricades.

In September 2023, “25/17” released the single “Three Cars”. The lyrical hero of the song was in turn disappointed in the Soviet “red faith”, in the “gray-haired and marked”, in the well-fed beginning of the century and in the new capitalism. “Turbopatriots” were glad that the group had finally spoken about Russia “straightforward,” and hastened to declare the song a “shot in the face” for supporters of the pro-Western path. However, Andrei Bledny advises not to rush to conclusions regarding this track: “Before drawing conclusions about the “thirst for blood” in the track “Three Cars,” I would advise you to listen to the text carefully. There’s a lot of text there, people without experience of listening to rap are often triggered by individual phrases and can no longer trace what the author wanted to say in his work.” Indeed, the main plot twist is in the final verse of the song: “I’ve told you three carloads of songs about social affairs. I raised money on this three carriages. And these songs no longer make any sense. I’ll go eat some and write about ten more.”

You can endlessly watch how one thing is expected from “25/17”, but the group does something completely different. From the new album “The Joy of Meetings and Partings”, many caring commentators were probably expecting a continuation of the 2022 mini-albums, which were full of signs and accurate assessments of time, the harsh truth in the spirit of “Three Carriages”. But the group released an album that, at the level of the title, arrangements and cover in the style of Soviet lyrical prose, takes the group out of the field of today’s current agenda.

Swallows, power line wires, the trail of an airplane high in the sky. The cover of “The Joy of Meetings and Partings” is a nostalgic Soviet pastoral, a tattered book from the library. However, “25/17” has a special sense of humor, and a plane with a contrail in the sky can be not only a passenger one. This is how the listener sees it.

Another link to the past – the arrangements seem to be from the soundtracks of Soviet films: lyrical, soft, as if dissolving in this blue sky. “Lullaby” is especially good in this sense, with its harpsichord-like keyboard sound, 1970s strings, croaking electric guitars and bulbous bass. The rap period invades this picture, disturbing the sweet sleep of the main character. It ends with the line “Today I learned that my friend died in the war.”

War is always somewhere nearby. It seems that this is what the song “Cotton” is about. Its text can be interpreted as follows: a peaceful life globally is impossible, your “cotton” will find you everywhere, it’s difficult to hide from it, but it’s worth a try. In the context of daily news from the Middle East, this song seems to be yet another poetic vision that the 25/17 catalog is rich in. Andrei Bledny himself talks about the song like this: ““Cotton” is a song-spell, a song-prayer, an attempt to lull your anxiety and move on with hope for the best.” And “25/17” has a lot of this hope in both music and lyrics. The musicians have no illusions about positive changes in life and in human nature, but along with humility and doom, there is hope that you can be the master of your destiny. “You can go to the front, you can go to a monastery, there are many ways to radically change your life,” says Bledny.

“25/17” are stern men, but in almost every album they have standard lyrical numbers, sometimes without rap at all. The album “The Joy of Meetings and Partings” contains more of these lyrics than ever before. “Near Space”, “Call”, “Border Guard”, “Blood” – it seems they have never written so much about love. But Bledny’s recitative regularly intervenes in Anton Zavyalov’s chanting verses and choruses, almost courtyard in their naive sincerity, as if revealing the dark underbelly of quiet everyday life.

In the album, as is often the case with “25/17”, quotes from the songs of Russian rockers who have long considered the group “theirs” pop up every now and then: “music for a man”, “he was older than her”, “love flies on wires” ” “We use quotes as samples, sometimes there is an additional meaning, sometimes there is none, and it’s just some file that was unzipped in my head when writing the text,” says Bledny. “The songs that I listened to will not change, they are part of of my time and part of me.” In this sense, the song “Blood” is interesting. This is not a literal quotation of “Nautilus Pompilius”, but a careful adherence to the poetic and melodic canon of a long-disbanded group, a beautiful homage. Just imagine how Vyacheslav Butusov sings this song. By the way, the album contains the voice of his peer Garik Sukachev. In the perfect nostalgic song “Suitcase,” he impersonates Tom Waits at maximum speed.

The song “Joy,” which opens the album, is about people “without a language,” those who “won’t express it themselves, but think the same way as me.” At first glance, this is a text about the “deep people”, whose voice “25/17” wants to be. But here, too, everything is not what it seems. “The phrase ‘deep people’ is usually used to mean ‘redneck,’ and those who say that have done much more for Putin’s presidency than all the political strategists put together,” says Bledny. He is closer to the more familiar language: “Are we part of the Russian people? Undoubtedly”.