Gino D'Eliso
Europa Hotel

"Those born in the middle of a century always feel on edge..."

Gino D'Eliso, having reached the milestone of 50 years, returns to the music market after a good 18 years since Cattivi pensieri with Europa Hotel, an album clearly inspired by the Balkans, the land where our artist had moved starting in 1986.

Eighteen springs of almost total discographic silence, except for a 13-minute instrumental suite released in 1994 (and of which practically nothing can be found on the web).

The lot of twelve songs is opened by "Samba dei missili", almost an oxymoron between music tending towards the cheerful and the lyrics which indeed speak of missiles, with an evident allusion to the Yugoslav wars, the last of which will be in 2001.

"Marinai" brings back the theme of the sea dear to Gino, to which he had dedicated the title of his first album 25 years before.

The title track is a tribute to the Balkans, which rhyme with "Persians". It sounds like a mix of Bowie and Battiato, with a hint of Springsteen. The words are carefully chosen, as expected from someone who had won an award as the best newcomer lyricist.

"I bambini di Sarajevo" immediately brings to mind "Padre a vent'anni" by Pooh, clearly dedicated to the war in the Balkans just a year before.

"Radio Belgrado" instinctively associates with "Radio Varsavia" by the aforementioned Franco, although it is this one, more than the previous song, that has a moving ending.

The duo "Ribelli sempre" and "Anni pesanti" takes on the aspects of generational chorus, and in the second, the phrase that opens this writing is sung.

This very song proves to be the best on the album, with a blend of genres. It opens with a lyrical tone reminiscent of "Comici cosmetici" by Alberto Camerini, proceeding with a glam-rock similar to Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and hints of 1930s revue theater music, reminiscent of the musical experiments of Battiato from 1974-75.

From this point, the album becomes lighter, with "Roxy Mambo", the least impactful song on the tracklist, and with the beautiful and sentimental "Magari sarà domani" and "Le ragazze di Trieste", refined and moving.

The finale is a surprise, with Gino delivering a surprising one-two: "Oktoberfest", written in 1983 for Patrizia Pazzani, known as Patrizia 'Zzani, with "Mitteleurock" the most representative song of this genre; and "Cruisin’ my life away", which echoes the English songs popular at the start of 2000.

What Gino D'Eliso has produced and played is a great return to active discography as well as one of the best singer-songwriter works of the decade, well above all the commercial stuff that was prevalent on the radio and TV.

Europa Hotel opens Gino's "digital trilogy", which brings to mind the one by Roman Flavio Giurato, who in 2007, but in a primitive version in 2002, will sing the story and make history with his Manuale del Cantautore (the capital C is mandatory).