Cappanera (Fabio e Roberto)
Non c'è più mondo

THE REVIEW

Cappanera is a band founded by Fabio and Roberto Cappanera, former members of the legendary Strana Officina, when, towards the late eighties and early nineties, they decided to give more vent to their blues rock soul (I’ve never quite managed to understand, having read different things from different sources, whether their intent was really to leave Strana Officina or to carry on a parallel project).

Yes, I know what you’re thinking: that starting a heavy blues project and releasing a record like this in 1991 is unthinkable, completely out of its time. And yet, you know what? It doesn’t matter at all. Because Cappanera had been around for a while, they were fully aware of their retro taste, they knew they were making trucker music, they knew this was the kind of music played in small-town bars. But hey, what can I say—how that trashy music from the bars makes you dream…

Because nowadays some folks have become caricatures: fifty- or sixty-year-old divorcees with a “resilience” tattoo who think they’re so rock and roll, as if only the Ramones and AC/DC exist. No, here it’s a different story, here we’re in sun-soaked Livorno on a hot June day, stopped by the roadside as a killer guitar riff blasts from the radio.

"Aurelia Freeway" is an anthem of the provinces, I don’t know how better to describe it. A warm blues dissolves into a catchy, sweeping chorus. Once, Bassi Maestro, if I’m not mistaken, said that really, it was good for Italian MCs not to be as rich as the American ones: in the end, it was actually a positive thing for their lyrics. The band here does something similar. Their Route 66 was the Aurelia: why pretend to be American? Was someone from Livorno any less tough than a Texan? Not at all. Sure, the allure of American rock and roll is a deep love, but never deny Tuscany! "Magiche notti americane, le mie donne nei rock and roll bar": a resigned manifesto for small-town life, a kind of rhetoric that would later bring fame to 883, just to name one. The quality rises even higher from an already stunning song: the title track is a mid-tempo number with a more metal chorus but still bluesy sections. The lyrics are a sort of Tuscan “Christ Stopped at Eboli”—a tale of degraded suburbs and the struggle to come to terms with them. "Siringhe piantate negli alberi, strade piene di polizia!"

You might expect a filler next, but instead, "Barbone" is their third bullseye. A wonderful song, so sad, but with a guitar that doesn’t hold back: instead of mellow melancholy, it delivers anguish and ferocity, with a fiercely tight mid-tempo riff over which the vocals spin spacious lines. "Impossibile capirti" is also very good, even if, at least to my taste, not quite as effective as the others. Even less convincing is the odd "La nostra banda vi prenderà", which can’t quite justify its length—at this point, you might worry that the band has spent all their best ammo up front and doomed the rest of the record, but that’s not at all the case. The best tracks are at the start, true, but Cappanera still have plenty of tricks up their sleeve. Check this out: "Amazzonia" is an ode to untamed freedom, a great heavy metal track just how I like it; "Cambierò" slows the BPM and scores again with a great chorus. "Drago dorato" is also excellent, with lyrics that, without being awkward or clumsy, celebrate friendship and love: a typical skill of those around the Strana Officina crew—think of "Vai Vai" or "Amore e fuoco". To close, the sweet "Vittima": a ballad that won’t knock you out of your seat, but more than holds its own.

What you realize with this lost gem of Italian hard rock is that you reach the end of the album and like every song, almost immediately. And, well, that’s no small feat. The influences reach deep into the blues rock school and the heavy music of the seventies and eighties. Gary Moore, Ozzy Osbourne, Saxon, Judas Priest, Deep Purple—like rain!—are just some of the names glimpsed here and there at the root of the Cappanera brothers’ inspiration.

A record with substance, where no lyric or music is left to carelessness, a little gem carved out of the atmospheres the band knew so well. The sound, well, isn’t so far from Strana Officina, but is that really a bad thing? The discography of these bands is so brief, after all!

So, with summer on the horizon, grab a chair and contemplate small towns or your broke beach: Cappanera’s music will take care of the rest.

"Il sole mi scalda i jeans, cappello sugli occhi la vita è favolosa". Rating: 89/100.