Alfie Zappacosta
Quick! Don't Ask Any Questions

THE REVIEW

This musician is almost unknown in our parts: he is Italian-Canadian (born in a town in Lazio), a pop singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Today, he's a handsome older man, a bit portly and gray-haired, but back in the eighties, he was quite a looker. Some of his albums that I happened to come across are bland and forgettable, but this still youthful "Quick..." from 1990 (his third career work) works great as a light and overly sentimental but classy product, somewhat jazz, somewhat soul, quite funky and quite electronic, insincere yet musically rich and emotionally passionate. We are in the realms of Hall & Oates, Michael McDonald, Simply Red, even Prince, in short, that "blue-eyed soul", the black music made by those whites (well, Prince is mixed-race...) who love it viscerally.

Zappacosta has a beautiful voice and a preference for the classical guitar, the one with nylon strings, whose presence in the arrangements occasionally diversifies a landscape dominated by keyboards and drums (electronic, or real but sounding almost electronic, due to the rigid style, lacking swing, very disco-like, which was prevalent in productions at the time). Fortunately, there is also a lot of piano, played divinely by his collaborator Marco Luciani (another paisano, kudos!), with that virtuosic jazz touch to embellish the pauses of the voice and propose elegant and musical harmonic inversions.

I am particularly fond of the second and third tracks, titled respectively "Nothing To Do With Love" and "Simple Word To Say". The first is a funky pop that impeccably unfolds its highly danceable groove, while Luciani unleashes cascades of chords and liquid dances on the ivory keys and the lead artist displays his fine singing, both bluesy and aphrodisiac. The second is an irresistibly romantic ballad, arranged with grace and effectiveness, that makes up for the extreme sentimentality with a beautiful melody and a lush interpretation.

Much of the album results in a series of moderate funk tracks which, at their best moments, those most imbued with jazz and propelled by a capable drummer in the flesh (yet another paisano, named Tony Azzopardi), even approach the atmospheres of Steely Dan. Not always, because elsewhere the danceable pop is much more conventional, heavily recalling Simply Red, apart from the singing which is entirely different, as Zappacosta's voice is less explosive and shrill than Hucknall's redhead.

As many as three ballads are concentrated at the end of the tracklist, very different from each other: the first "I'll Be The One" is very (too) slow and mannered, the second "Worries Away" is more lively and piano-oriented, the final "Don't Ask Me" is an Alfie acoustic guitar showcase, delicately plucked to accompany the warm voice, with just a subtle enhancement of electronic strings added.

A celebrity in Canada, a complete unknown in Europe, particularly in his native country: Alfie Zappacosta.