It took an eighty-four year old singer-songwriter, one of those of the old guard, one who made the history of Italian song to release an unusual, original and out of fashion album. Or rather it's a double album so you have two options.
If you are incurable romantics, dreamers or nostalgics, start first from the second album "I Ricordi" with its great hits rearranged and played by important musicians such as Danilo Rea, Rita Marcotulli, Alfred Golino e Ares Tavolazzi. There are also the excellent arches of the "Rome Jazz String Orchestra"Under the direction of Marcello Sirignano.
It is not cheap, since it is not the usual "greatest hits" of the moment. The great classics are reread with great taste, elegance and without ever compressing the song. Moreover, Paoli's voice, so clean and without virtuosity, is always very personal and very recognizable among a thousand. Even the writing style is in clear contrast with the current young singers certainly endowed with great extensions, great grit but frankly often followers of this or that star of the moment.
There is nothing to do, but when it comes to well-made songs, you don't get out of the equilateral triangle of text, music ed interpretation. And these here are done with a compass. The proof lies in the fact that songs from many decades ago like Sassi, What's up, Sapore di sale they are still fascinating and timeless even if they are sewn in a different musical dress from the original versions. In short, we are talking about real classics revisited with great taste.
At this point I could object to the initial statement regarding the originality of this production. Then I would defend myself by proposing to listen to the first album curiously entitled "Songs interrupted”In which we note the unconventional choice of a songwriter who, all in all, would have nothing more to demonstrate artistically speaking. In fact, the disc is made up of four large “suites” programmatically entitled as the seasons (in order Summer Winter Spring Autumn) in which the songs practically act as an interlude to extended instrumental moments.
Thus a "Copernican revolution" takes place in form. The songs are "interrupted" precisely because they do not have the canonical form of introduction-verse-recorded-take. These are sketches in the form of notes without particular development, almost thrown away, but often linked by a single narrative theme. For this reason, they seem to draw aesthetically on the German romantic lied of the nineteenth century or, if you like, on the tradition of concept albums that have now gone out of fashion. And this is where I find originality.
In the years of liquid music, fast listening and radio of music in mp3 finally an album to listen to without interruption, just like listening to a vinyl record carefully and you got up from the sofa only to change the side.
In an interview Paoli declares that these songs stopped they are such because essentiality has now become his preferred form; which translates into the effort (or naturalness) to say something with three words instead of fifty. A thought, this, very disruptive in its apparent simplicity and perhaps you can guess the choice of using jazz musicians who are notoriously the most versatile for an "anarchic" operation like this.
But let's go into detail, to understand each other better. The first movement Summer is the longest (13 minutes) and has love as its main theme, not the cheesy or oleographic one, but rather a reflection of a person who lived through it and regards it now in the light of maturity.
Texts slender e simple, but which point straight to the concept without many frills. And this is the strength of these verses because as Horace teaches when yes they want to write lyrics with the best of intentions often on the page "parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. " We take "Don't say you love me”In which the denial of the declaration on the contrary affirms, as if to say that true love is elusive and“ invisible to the eye ”. Similar concept in "My wrong love”In which the sentimental relationship is not sung as the mere assonance of a soul mate, but is nourished by contradictions, by differences.
The second movement Winter definitely presents time as a leitmotif. The memories, the illusions and disillusions, the images passed in "When I was twenty", The existential sarcasm in"I met sadness”Followed by a long piano solo that could frame a melancholy scene from a Nouvelle Vague film. The suite closes with the disenchanted "I want to die sick”Which, in spite of the topic, is deliberately packaged on light-hearted and cheerful music. Nobody wants to talk about death today in a virtual and holographic world, but Paoli cleverly desecrates it talking about it in an ironic way, stating that the ugly is not dying in itself, but doing it without really having lived.
The third movement Spring is characterized by the theme of friendship, death (again!), people. But not only that, after all. As in "We of the sea”Where life is compared to the sea with its good and anomalous waves. Sure, not a new poetic analogy, but I challenge listeners to find such a profound concept condensed into a couple of minutes of song. And then there is "My friend”Introduced by a thin and diaphanous piano accompaniment that seems to you to float in the sky of a room. In short, four notes, but perfectly fitting and a whirlwind of melancholy and wonder plant themselves in your stomach. "My woman is my freedom"Is supported by an effective orchestral theme with an almost operatic flavor that extends seamlessly into"We were two dogs in the church”Dedicated to the late Don Gallo.
Read more Autumn closes the record and seems to condense the testament of the artist-man, one who basically tried to live the life that resembles him. Significantly the disc closes with the poignant "When I go"In a pearl of disenchanted poetry:" When I leave, give my name to a cat and always stroke it with your lazy hands. "
What can I say, the record served. The recording is excellent and Danilo Rea is masterful in punctuating these interrupted songs with bright and melancholy phrasing. One impression I got is that the orchestral arrangement could perhaps have been written in such a way as to be exploited more. Maybe I would have preferred a more elaborate writing, less homorhythmic and more inspired by traditional symphonism than by clichés, but basically it's all about details.
Lorenzo Sorbo
