Andrea Nardinocchi
Il Momento Perfetto

Reviewing an Italian album is akin, in most cases, to critically analyzing the astral expansion of a tumorous blob in the form of hateful screams, fake artists, old hacks, pseudo-poets, an ungrateful blend, heir to the true Italian songs from the great schools of the '60s and '70s, a compositional and creative regression, even an anachronism in terms of content, and a lot, a great deal of soggy mud from products crafted at the drawing board from pathetic talent shows. Excluding some rocks able to hold their own decently and a few examples of underground aspirations, the Italian music scene is a Titanic sinking without knowing it, a band of horrendous songwriters of the lowest possible quality still capable of elevating their miserable productions to timeless masterpieces. And if the forefather and everlasting absolute sovereign of such trash remains Blasco with his little scores and poems fit for teenagers with serious dyslexia issues, the proportional increase of the beautiful country's melodic chaos has been enriched with the insipid exiles of Amici and the like (so anonymous that it's even problematic to distinguish their names and faces, let alone the songs) and with the new wave of pseudo-rappers so boastful and arrogant as to insult and denigrate without dignity international colleagues who could wipe out the entire (non) current Italian musical heritage with a single flat note.

The choice to review Andrea Nardinocchi's offering is absolutely not the usual philosophical discourse "even in dung a flower can grow" aimed at justifying and even defending nationalistically the tricolor trends in music: the young debutant is perhaps one of the few Italians looking abroad and not south of the Alps, effectively perceiving the multiple Anglo-American influences - and not only - and "varying" his production by distancing it from the lewd fashion of fake singer-songwriters. I first noticed Mr. Nardinocchi in the debut video clip for Un posto per me, a track that, excluding the short film (a sort of remake of Le Vibrazioni for the Milanese canals) and the somewhat forced lyrics, struck me with its R&B-electronic approach, a combination of genres virtually absent from the national charts, and for an interesting use of vocal falsetto, halfway between Marco Mengoni and Justin Timberlake, the latter creator of the best pop album of 2013 to date, The 20/20 Experience. Andrea's first album, Il Momento Perfetto, has been a decidedly unusual listening choice for my standards and tastes yet represented a small surprise: Nardinocchi can indeed aspire to be a good drawbridge between international pop, with all its contaminations and myriad approaches, and the classic good-natured pseudo-poetic though sometimes acceptable style of various Tiziano Ferro (he too an example of a tricolor artist who aims the binoculars beyond Mont Blanc). Il Momento Perfetto is indeed a work balanced between these two worlds, a sometimes patchy overpass (listen, for example, to Marracash's pitiful participation and some "silly" lyrics block) however capable of adequately renewing Italian-ness on the staff by updating it with new international trends, primarily with the latest soul-electronic-urban marriage perhaps a bit too copied in the States yet pleasant to savor in a country that offers in its major show, namely Sanremo, the worst of the worst of sonic (and general cultural) anachronism.

The album is, as already mentioned, dominated by atmospheres of soul inscribed and circumscribed in a unique synth-electronic with significant portions of dubstep and R&B. This is noted, besides the first single Un posto per me, in Le labbra screpolate, a good example of urban-techno marriage although crowned by an "odd" text, in the hefty dubstep of Storia Impossibile and Non Mi Lascio Stare, in the grime-industrial influences of Come Stai. Interesting too is the proto-alternative approach of Bisogno di te and the synth-trance funky from cabaret with added auto-tune for Con uno sguardo. Thumbs down instead for Tu sei pazzo, a negative response also given by Marracash's feature.

Not a masterpiece, not a milestone of discography nor a stellar and astonishing debut, Nardinocchi's entry into the Italian (and perhaps also international) music biz with Il Momento Perfetto demonstrates that the Alps are not that hard to overcome and that the positive (but also negative) global influences of sound and creativity can take root even in the fiefdoms of various Vasco, Ligabue, Pausini, and Ramazzotti. Now it will be necessary to verify the extent of these drafts, whether they are breezes or cyclones, and to hope for an as-yet-unlikely transition of Italian music from the Ancien Regime of current lords to a modern era made of variety, novelty, and richness. And above all, of decent and competitive artists.

Andrea Nardinocchi, Il Momento Perfetto

Il momento perfetto - Un posto per me - Storia impossibile - Persi insieme - Le labbra screpolate - Tu sei pazzo - Le pareti - Non mi lascio stare - Bisogno di te - Con uno sguardo - Amare qualcuno - Come stai