Daniele Silvestri
Acrobati

THE REVIEW

Five years have passed since his last S.C.O.T.C.H., and two since the shared experience with Nicolò Fabi and Max Gazzè, Daniele Silvestri offers his audience perhaps his best work in over 20 years of his career. We are talking about "Acrobati," a massive album with 18 tracks for almost an hour and a quarter of great music, with numerous collaborations that make the album truly outstanding. Diodato contributed to the songs "Pochi giorni" and the concluding "Alla fine" (a programmatic title); Roberto Dell'Era participated in the song "Un altro bicchiere," a track about Saturday night, and in "Spengo la luce"; Diego Mancino duetted with Daniele in "L'orologio"; Caparezza, born Michele Salvemini, composed with Silvestri one of the most successful tracks of the list, namely "La guerra del sale"; finally, the collaborations even include the Campanians Funky Pushertz, in "Bio-Boogie," a song about organic food, also sung in the Neapolitan dialect. Although the album is very long (reminiscent of "Il dado," the only double album by the Roman singer-songwriter, released precisely 20 years ago), it is full of pleasant and unique solutions, like "Monolocale," very unusual in its unconventional composition, yet extremely enjoyable, and existential and political pieces, as in the opening trio that alone is worth buying the album: "La mia casa," "Quali alibi," and the title track "Acrobati". The second of these was tasked with launching the album, and it is full of wordplay, just like "La guerra del sale" (which here are hilarious!), and references to the current political situation, where "third-hand governments" reign, and I don't think further explanation is needed... Political relevance, existence, and feeling, this is the winning mix of a project that Silvestri defined as "Live in studio," to testify the creative explosion that characterized it. Some "shorts" break the airiness of long tracks, like "Pensieri," which lasts just 2 minutes and a half, and the ironic "Tuttosport," where in one minute and eighteen seconds the singer of "Le cose in comune" talks about boxing and Roland Garros, but also the Palio of Siena, with an almost didactic tone. In fact, Daniele's voice has never been particularly melodic, so he manages to use different registers, semi-singing, ironic speaking, up to the spoken sequence at the end of "La mia routine," which almost seems like a mistake, yet aims to convey the "live in studio" idea mentioned earlier. I believe, at first glance, that it's difficult to find such originality in the so-called "mainstream" Italian music scene, but it must also be said that Daniele Silvestri has never been too "Salirò", but not too "Cohiba" either, and this has always been his stylistic hallmark.