Antonello Venditti
Unica

Antonello Venditti returns to the music market with "Unica" after the now customary four-year break between works.

With the previous "Dalla pelle al cuore", "Unica" shares some elements in common: same producer (Alessandro Colombini), almost unchanged ensemble of musicians (featuring Fabio Pignatelli of Goblin and Alessandro Centofanti), same guest-stars (Gato Barbieri and Carlo Verdone), and the same crowd of co-authors of the songs: only two of the nine musical tracks are the fruit of Venditti's sole handwriting, a characteristic that may raise some skepticism among the more prejudiced about the product's actual authenticity but, much more likely, reflects Antonello's generosity in attributing due credit to the contributions provided by his collaborators in the piece composition phase: indeed, there is no doubt about the "Vendittian" authorship of the same, except for two exceptions that will be discussed later.

This product still includes themes of social commitment and freedom of expression, illustrated, as has been the practice for some years now, with tones that are lyrically simple and direct yet unfortunately also emphatically embellished.

However, Antonello appears honest with his warm and saturated tones, although these translate into a further and drastic filtering of the Vendittian vocabulary, now reduced to "heart-love-sun-moon-star-freedom-sky-night-wind-air-soul" and little else, no longer susceptible to further permutations among the individual terms: heart-love rhymes are abundant.

A similar, if not more severe, discussion applies to the musical proposal.

What strikes at first impact is not so much the "already heard", but rather the flatness and anonymity of the arrangements; there isn't even a solo that can be defined as such, NOTHING; the only solo present, that of Gato Barbieri (a shining note in the ensemble) on sax in "E allora canta", is abruptly and thus idiotically cut off in fade-out.

Although the album consists of nine tracks, the overall duration of the work does not reach 36 minutes, ergo less than four minutes per song, an almost insurmountable limit imposed by the despicable dictatorship of marketing: where the lyrics end, the music ends.

Antonello, who started not only as a singer-songwriter (never verbose) but also as a musician, has so far (at least in his best works) always rightly dedicated space to those suggestive musical expanses, which serve as crowning achievements of his compositions as well as amplifiers of his messages: the lyrics were functional to the arrangement and vice versa; the mandolin in "Campo de' Fiori" and the sax in "Modena" still literally give goosebumps: it's difficult to imagine these two gems fading away in the grip of the scant four minutes, just as it's difficult to imagine a "Comfortably Numb" and a "Stairway to Heaven" stripped of their stunning electric guitar solos.

After these necessary premises, let's examine the individual tracks in order which, however (or rather "therefore"), turn out to be all potential hit singles.

The engaging "E allora canta", an anthem to freedom (composed with Carlo Fadini) "inspired" by the recent student uprising against blind and deaf institutional despotism, certainly cannot compare to the similar "Modena" and "Compagno di scuola", but manages to excite just like the title track; although Antonello reprises the same chord progression of "Piero e Cinzia" and well 3/9 of the previous "Dalla pelle al cuore" (the namesake track, "Scatole vuote", "La mia religione"), the melody of "Unica", co-authored by Giovanni Risitano, is pleasant, effective and immediately impactful.

A guitar riff like "Run like Hell" introduces "Oltre il confine", a beautiful first-person account of an African emigrant's exodus to the promised land (but the "posto fatto apposta" could have been avoided).

"Ti ricordi il cielo", a track entirely composed by the promising Pacifico (already co-author for Gianna Nannini and Adriano Celentano), is pleasing to listen to, but has nothing of Venditti (except for the doubtful co-authorship of the lyrics), in fact, it resembles more early 80s Franco Battiato ("Le aquile" and surroundings), while "Forever" (whose initial electric guitar arpeggio reprises that of "In my Place" by Coldplay), sees music signed by Sanremo's Maurizio Fabrizio, already at Venditti's court ("Che Fantastica storia è la vita", "Giuda") and of Renato Zero ("I migliori anni della nostra vita", "La pace sia con te"); if we overlook Antonello's musical pronunciation of the word "forever" (it seems he is imitating Corrado Guzzanti imitating him), this track too is appreciable.

"Ti brucerai..."; "Piccola stella senza cielo" by Luciano Ligabue? No, "Come un vulcano", a pseudo-dance filler garnished with predictable monosyllabic choruses that takes its title from a phrase extracted from "Raggio di luna".

Next is "Cecilia", a track written with drummer-guitarist Alessandro Canini and dedicated to the "saint of music"; the beautiful and suggestive initial atmosphere (which vaguely recalls "Eva" by Umberto Tozzi), upon which a powerful vocal performance by Antonello rises, literally vanishes when the chilling "la-la-la-la-laaaa" begins; but the idea of including a soprano (as in "Una stupida e lurida storia d'amore") was not considered by anyone?

"Non ci sono anime" (co-authored by new-entries Risitano and Beppe Arena) benefits from another convincing melodic line, albeit not immediately striking, but it is hampered by some overused "eeeehhh" in true Vasco Rossi style.

The album closes with the skimpy three minutes of "La ragazza del lunedì", that is "Italy leaving Silvio Berlusconi" just like any girlfriend leaves an important boyfriend who ensnares her only "when convenient"; the first track extracted from the album, written with Canini and Danilo Cherni, is perhaps destined to become the most known, thanks to its danceable music (sadly akin to "Ricchi e Poveri") and the bizarre quasi-amateur videoclip shot with the "Led Zeppelin-like" Carlo Verdone (in drummer role) during recording sessions at Venditti's home-studio, where the entire staff, hopping and wriggling, mocks the then prime minister ("Silvio, what will I do without you? I'll get back the life I lived with you").

Even if "Unica" leaves the sensation of another opportunity that could have been better exploited, overall Venditti releases a work neither praiseworthy nor disgraceful, at an irreparable distance from his most successful works, yet honest, not despicable, and clearly preferable compared to the current Italian singer-songwriter production, from which, unfortunately, more and more marketing puppets emerge rather than pure musical talents.

It's unlikely that today's "Incancellabile" story will be appreciated thirty years from now as much as the "Le storie di ieri", dated 1975, still are today.