Acustimantico
La bella stagione

As usual, I always have some trouble when I'm asked to categorize a certain singer or band within a genre. Here I am again going up and down the proposed list... and I go up and down, and down and up... Italian song, yes. But also singer-songwriter music, and why not world music, jazz, or folk music? Before doing all this, this time, dear friends, I first made sure that writing the word Acustimantico in the "artist" search field of this very site, nothing would come up whatsoever. So, I am proud and flattered, above all, that I am the first to write (as best as I can) something about this great and beautiful Italian band (a true revelation in the dull panorama of Italian music) becoming less and less unknown to most. I have to thank the Roman radio station RadioRock for introducing them to me, if today I can talk about this band, own their three CDs (absolutely self-produced) which are wonderful both in their form (each CD is always well taken care of even in its "packaging" - is that how you say it?!?! - the first black, the second blue, the third white) and in their substance, and if I can brag about enjoying their beautiful music in at least a dozen of their concerts around Rome in the last four or five years (concerts with sometimes unusual locations for a concert, but that in the end matched very well with their melody).

So, I wanted to talk about their second CD, "La bella stagione", the blue CD, to return to the packaging discourse. The voice of Raffaella Misiti, naturally, is almost the first thing that pleasantly reaches the ear, but the other members of the band are second to none, there are quite a few and now the names don't come to me, and there are many because Acustimantico doesn't just play with guitar, bass, and drums, but with another myriad of instruments (even quite unusual ones...), making this their Italian folk music, also jazz, klezmer, dreamlike, electronic, and a thousand other musical nuances that blend into their songs with perfect simplicity.
La Bella Stagione wins several of the most important music awards, such as the De André prize, the critics' prize at the Recanati prize, and much more. It is a beautiful, simple, colorful, sincere album. You can sit and listen to it as you would listen to a fairy tale with soft colors and gentle sounds of a thousand insects on a spring meadow. La Bella Stagione conveys serenity, and it does so without expecting anything in return. The choruses and verses easily get inside you, almost like those old partisan songs (listen to "Lotta di classe d'amore"), sweet feelings get inside you (listen to the delicate "Gli amanti di un giorno"), the sonic electricity gets inside you making you happily scream "LALALALALALALALLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" (listen to "Radio"). A beautiful, straightforward, truly well-made album. It was a pleasure to introduce it to you. It was a pleasure to introduce you to Acustimantico.

PS: It might seem like a politically aligned band, and maybe it is, indeed: it surely is. But I think it could also appeal to someone who votes Forza Italia (!oh my....).

PS2: ah... just a few days ago a friend of mine for my birthday gave me their fourth CD, called "disco n.4". This to tell you that their albums are no longer three, but four.

Happy listening.