Calcutta
Mainstream

"Gaetano told me that we live in the ghetto but in the meantime I think that/ if I slept on your side of the bed I might be you/

I wanted to have children, not too many, not too few, neither now nor tomorrow/ but with each approaching winter you want to start a company that makes handmade curtains

I made a swastika in the center of Bologna but it was just to argue/ I didn’t want to party, and I needed an excuse to leave you"

It starts with these verses, Mainstream, the second album by Calcutta released about two years ago. Calcutta, paradoxically in the spotlight only recently with songs of an entirely different tenor (Oroscopo, for example). Calcutta, a Roman singer-songwriter about whom much has already been said, capable of dividing and splitting public opinion and critics: it's true that you either hate him or love him.

But far from dedicating an entire review to the mere figure of an artist who has already said too much and perhaps, who knows if he will have as much more to say, it is probably much more important to focus on providing a direct evaluation of the CD. First note: too short. Just eleven tracks for not even thirty minutes of listening. In the Spotify era, surely no one expected a double album, but certainly, the feeling of being fooled is quite strong. Second note: two instrumental interludes of dubious quality. Third note: stereotyped concept. After all, like Lou Reed in Berlin and others before him, Calcutta does nothing but talk about a love that ends (badly) throughout the album, though not with the same lyrical and poetic prose possessed by songwriters of entirely different caliber. Nevertheless, there is a vague sweetness caught in the ballad "Ma che mi manchi a fare", undoubtedly, along with Gaetano, the most successful track on the album, but without the pathos, the tragedy, without the point of no return in the troubles and folds of the human soul. What's left, in the end, are the remnants of the hangover of a relationship, like the taste of a drink you have in your mouth the morning after having spent a wild night. Limonata is ultimately that sour taste that stays in the throat, after mutual misunderstandings, dictated by not wanting to be (or become?) that kind of boring person from whom, during the wild nights spent wandering around the Navigli of Milan, you want to distance yourself at all costs. Frosinone, on the other hand, speaks of the tragedy of silent dawns, with pizza in the little room, typical of university students. Del verde; a prayer or sort of serenade, a last desperate attempt to keep the past still, to forgo this permanent job (but lucky you, Calcutta!) to remain immersed, for a moment longer, in the green with her, his (or your, dear listener?) Beatrice. And so on, thus talking about love in 2015 but also in 2017, with those ways and tones that remind you a bit of the American new new wave (Mac De Marco, in primis) made of samples and 90's arcade rhythms, with a keen eye for sounds recalling the aesthetic movements of the moment (did someone say Vaporwave?) and cannot, at certain moments, not make you think of that prophetic style of someone who becomes the spokesperson for an entire generation's misfortunes already told by other famous predecessors of the good Calcutta (who at times seems to mimic Venditti).

In short, keep your money tight, but listen to Calcutta, and do it well, because although Mainstream is by no means an album to proudly display in your collection, with so little, it unfortunately has way too much to say. After all, the same rule applied to Kurt Cobain: either you love him, or you hate him. He must have something to say, right?

A cultural fresco. Anthropological.