Angelo Branduardi
Il ladro

As with the vast majority of musicians, even for Angelo Branduardi, the period of greatest splendor was relatively short and confined to a specific timeframe: 1975-1979, "La Luna," "Alla Fiera Dell'Est," "La Pulce d'Acqua," and "Cogli la Prima Mela." This is the classic Branduardi, the unforgettable one, the best ever. After this cycle, the Lombard musician experienced a career of relative highs and lows, always within the context of overall good/excellent quality production. The first attempt to simplify his style and "distance" himself from the baroque/medieval folk that made him famous was an album quite bland like "Branduardi '81," then the excellent "Cercando l'Oro," the happy elegiac experiment of "Branduardi Canta Yeats," and the courageous but at times weak "Pane e Rose."

Precisely "Pane e Rose" provides an effective portrait of this "experimental" Branduardi, who for the first time tackles distinctly social and contemporary themes with the magnificent "1° aprile 1965" and "Miracolo a Goiania" and navigates introspection ("Il primo della classe," "Pioggia," "L'albero") and attempts at ethnic pop with fairly quirky outcomes, with the sole exception of "Tango." Two years pass, and the curly-haired minstrel shows he has learned the lesson well, eliminating the dead wood of the previous album, that is, the impromptu and somewhat garish experiments with Brazilian and '80s sounds foreign to his musical sphere, and he comes out with what I believe to be his best album after those from the aforementioned "classic" period: surprising, unique, "Il Ladro." The beautiful stylized portrait on the cover says a lot about what "Il Ladro" offers: a thoughtful and enigmatic Branduardi: warm colors for the facial features, white and light blue for the thick hair, standing out against a dark and leaden background. This is not an easy album, it is a "heavy" listen because it is highly introspective and full of reflections; there are no joyful and positive moments, the music is at times dreamy and delicate, perfectly molded to Branduardi’s thin and evocative voice, who sings with pathos and delicacy not easy texts, of rare and poignant beauty.

The track that gives the album its title is an enigmatic noir tableau: nocturnal atmospheres, hesitant, sighing voice, measured rhythms; an unsettling and incorporeal presence transpires, elusive and shadowy, suspended between dream and reality, "Madame," "Il tempo di partire," and "Il grido" further accentuate this dark connotation: songs of unease, bitterness, disorientation, always well-supported by the arrangements, "Bella faccia" is an extremely intense and vibrant ballad in its melancholy and delicacy, "we will remain alone watching the evening, without speaking, we will never grow old, I will protect you from pain and boredom" sings Branduardi in the refrain; this is perhaps the only ray of sunshine on the album; a sunset ray, dim and timid, for the rest "Il Ladro" fundamentally speaks of human miseries, lives without joy and feelings, those of "Uomini di passaggio" and the defeat and resignation of a melancholy "Ballerina." With "Amazzonia" Branduardi returns to Brazil, but if in "Miracolo a Goiania" the tragedy was veiled behind joyful and sunny music, here it manifests openly, the melody is catchy and rhythmic, sweet, but leaves inside a resigned sadness, an inevitable sense of emptiness, where there was once the forest, life, now "only dust for us, only ash in the eyes, what we now eat is not mandarin, is not mango, is not papaya, is not yellow melon"; "Il bambino dei topi" proposes with exemplary tact and sensitivity a theme like alienation; the mysterious child hermetically closed in on himself and irreparably confined to his own world is certainly the strongest image of this album, thanks also to the soft and minimal electronic arrangement that maximizes the lyrical aspect of the track. "Ai confini dell'Asia," is finally the last theatrical twist, without a clear destination, among confused landscapes, "indistinct in the fog," fleeing from a city "where it is hard to breathe, where at dusk people look out pale on the balconies."

Highly underrated and often ignored, "Il Ladro" is undoubtedly Angelo Branduardi’s last great swan song, the last legacy of absolute value: from then on just more than decent albums and so much, so much craft. This is an unrepeatable album by the artist's own admission, strongly influenced by the style of keyboardist and producer Marco Canepa, and decidedly too little aligned, too different from the minstrel we are used to knowing, the unusual, mournful, and fascinating "dark" side of Angelo Branduardi, who like a thief acts in the night, when dreams blend with reality, and then vanishes without leaving a trace, elusive and shadowy.