Banco del Mutuo Soccorso
Urgentissimo

It happened in an unspecified night of times, that Mutual Aid slowly faded away and with it the saturated decade that delivered to the progressive admirers (not only from across the Channel), one of the most golden musical chapters of the entire twentieth century. The Banco remained, which during 1979, in a few months, led to a clear shift towards looser sounds, dare we say stubbornly commercial, that the followers of the old guard experienced firsthand with tremendously justifiable suspicion. It is also true that keeping up with the times was a much more recurrent motto in those days. Hence the already rarefied and simplified “Canto Di Primavera” closed the fortunate cycle, handing the baton to an emotionally restored group, purveyors of the energetic live "Capolinea" (a title very likely not chosen randomly), which definitively sealed in a watertight vault, that imperial and granitic baroque and orchestral rock, irrevocably throwing away the key and opening up to the eighties with works of more rapid and immediate ear-catching style.

Avoiding what could concern a purely stylistic discussion, I consider "Urgentissimo" an album of excellent sound qualities. The Nocenzi brothers, Maltese, and the rest of the troop, generate a full-length that structurally stands on more aggressive guitars, highly skilled bass lines, and keyboards with atmospheric and intelligent flashes of electronics. Nothing so plastic and mixed-breed, therefore. The album is pleasant, not tiring, not disappointing, it is a more direct rock, cunning and functional, but really very artisanal and with a high personality. Perhaps their most inspired product of the eighties, along with “Banco” from 1983, which reshuffles the cards and stands out for a more sober elegance, at the expense of the weaker "Buone Notizie" dated 1981, a less successful attempt to emulate "Urgentissimo" and the more unfortunate "...E Via" released in early 1985, the last and exhausting "act of sorrow," sadly accompanied by the fifteenth place of "Grande Joe" at the thirty-fifth Sanremo Festival, before a timid and more dignified return in the nineties.

The sweet and enchanting voice of Francesco "Ciccio" Di Giacomo completes the rest. He knows how to blend in delicately as a brush and, as always, knows how to place himself in the exact moments with the right tone, above those new and stimulating melodies of the beginning of the decade. Stories of old, stories of souls on the edge, of Paolo the damned homosexual, Felice the dreamer and Anna the suicide on a full moon night. Then other thoughts and concepts on living and daily maladies, of gods not received and doubtful skies, of interior rebalances, of something that agonizes inside, that wears away and at the same time makes one reflect.

An album in my opinion excessively snubbed and to be courageously reevaluated, which has as its only fault that of somehow adapting to the times in a phase of change. An album that all in all, at those times adapts, however, with foresight, offering a distinctly high quality and that should not be forcibly compared with what the band had produced until the previous year, because the stylistic turn is decisive and would risk letting every serene evaluation fall into the rhetorical and the grotesque. Rating: 8-/10

I close with my personal and simple thought, dedicating my memory to Francesco and what remains one of the most cheerful, exciting, and clean voices of the Italian scene and with the regret of not having had the time to hear it live, despite awaiting a new concert tour, at which I had finally promised myself to be present. Even though they are lively and joyful, that voice and that lovable figure that birthed it, will be eternal.