Cosmo
L'ultima festa

The annoying feeling of being the last to know things.
Your cousin's wedding, the crappy roommate deciding to leave the house, the latest gossip among friends, I could even be dead without knowing it and still be the last to find out, after the gravestone, of course.

With very little channel surfing with the cathodic joypad and never turning the radio on/off, the Facebook wall is an excellent thermometer and litmus test at the same time to make me aware of what my average contact is listening to. And so, between a black-and-white photo and various hashtags, statuses against supposed fake people, and other overly edited photos with breasts in 4k on display and a philosophical quote with a side of big likes, I end up with the link to the latest single by Thegiornalisti.

I'm always late by nature, but curious by vocation in understanding and sociologically studying the direction of the wind. But I'm also the one who doesn't believe much in providence and always keeps a pocket umbrella ready in the shoulder bag when he understands that there's not much of a festive air in the sky.

A wind that blows strong and has led to the fall of the wall and the passage to the bourgeois public of people like Calcutta, Thegiornalisti, Ex-Otago, and Cosmo who were probably confined to their oxymoronic pop-niche until about 3-4 years ago.

And we come to Cosmo, the solo adventure of Marco Jacopo Bianchi from the Turin band Drink To Me, an electro-dreamy project with four albums to its credit, but which so far has not received much feedback at least in Italy, although "S" from 2012 should at least be mentioned here.

Listeners of Cosmo can typically be divided into two categories: those who have already been following him due to his past with the mother band and the casual listener who probably hearing him for the first time on the radio exalts his deeds.

It's important to clarify that the use of the English language and the combination of electronic research and dream-pop atmospheres, the trademark of Drink To Me's "S," are shelved in favor of more orthodox synthetic rhythms and Italian singer-songwriter tradition. Among the various influences of the author, Franco Battiato, Animal Collective, and Grimes are mentioned.

What emerges is an album that in several respects is slick, and whose search for digital bases, in some cases struck (the title-track to be looped), clashes with certain shortcuts that bring it much closer to radio products than what happened with Drink To Me (despite "Future Days" would have made the fortune of many radio playlists). A process of simplification and Italianization that could be chided as unconvincing.

Balancing between club party vibes (the title track) and reinterpretation of the green-white-red tradition ("Un lunedì di festa") Cosmo's second solo album sounds probably in line with what's trending now, but it fails to awaken the necessary interest to be remembered long into the coming months.

And still, it's okay to follow the wind, it's okay to love Santa Claus, it's okay to take a swim at New Year's, but cropped pants and floral trousers, not so much.