Cesare Basile
Storia di Caino

"They didn't even have time to make mistakes/they will never make mistakes again"

There is something stubborn, insistent in the music of Cesare Basile. Like his way of singing, for example, that pronouncing of words both articulated and hesitant at the same time. Phrases spit out in pieces, fragmented, pronounced with subtle pain. It is a protest not shouted, rather sharp, proud to musically embody something that is increasingly hard to find. Dignity. Perhaps anger. Non-resignation. The kind that characterizes the characters of his stories, a losing humanity that is neither judged nor pitied, but told, brought to life with strength, livid, pulsating. These are short stories, splinters (half of the songs are under three minutes), paths filled with roughness, which sometimes explode in your face ("Canto dell'osso", "Storia di Caino"), other times they prod you with their edges ("Per nome", "Gli agnelli", "Donna al pozzo"). There is also a strong component of spirituality, that frees itself from dogmas the moment it names them; many songs contain biblical and religious references in general, not only the one that gives the album its title, or the painful yet liberating final invocation of "Maria degli ammalati". It is a general feeling that permeates the whole work, a fire that burns slowly and then flares up suddenly, leaving an intense warmth once it has died out. And then there's love, also sharp in form, like a hook, a dream that is as much longed for as it is dangerous because it can devour those who become involved in it ("All'uncino di un sogno").

The stylistic hallmark is the same that has gradually been defined in previous albums Gran Calavera Elettrica and Hellequin Song. Dark folk, blues, broken rhythms and occasional but incisive distorted guitars, as in the story of Caino, whose living voice tells us where the hatred for his brother was born ("he was a shepherd and served with blood, with his knife he wrote prayers, wearing the pride of God's love"), conceptually also a worthy heir to "Fratello gentile" from the previous album. In contrast, we have "Sul mondo e sulle luci", a soft and choral piano elegy that is perhaps the peak of the album. The restlessness has the sound of distant feedback in "Gli agnelli", the rattles of "Donna al pozzo", the filtered voice of "A tutte ho chiesto meraviglia", the distorted riff of "Canto dell'osso".

If I had to name names to give some musical reference, rather than the usual Cave or Lanegan, I would say Califone, the more thoughtful Giant Sand, Calexico and the Willard Grant Conspiracy, whose singer appears in "What else have I to spur me in to love". But these are only imprecise citations, as Basile's music becomes with each album increasingly personal, authoritative, creator, and not an epigone. It is significant that precisely from such codified forms, inserted into a tradition, a sound is born that steers clear of clichés and opposes as vehemently as implicitly the shapeless, useless background that we listen to daily.

The only moment of explicit modernity is ironically also the musically lighter and airier one. Driven by a choral guitar that would splendidly suit sugar-free Belle & Sebastien, "Il fiato corto di Milano" is a fierce yet lucid satire inhabited by grotesque yet real characters like the fried-chicken bankers and the Corona-branded partisans ("let anyone come to the bank, let them come and grub around, here there is no glory and no honor to preserve").

In an arid and desert landscape, the music of Cesare Basile has the strength of water (which I previously called fire) that breaks the dry earth and flows for a moment, stubborn and unbeaten even when it loses. Especially then.

"Bent and distant over the elements of disaster/from things that happen above the words/celebrating nothingness/along an easy wind/of satiety and impunity/the majority stands." ("Smisurata preghiera", Fabrizio De Andrè)