This album is one of the most beautiful things to come out of our progressive scene, "late to the party," but of the purest beauty. The band from Asti delivers an album that embodies the pure and classic progressive-rock-romantic sound, intensely inspired by English models, with Genesis at the forefront (sometimes even too much—the intro of "Profumo di colla bianca" feels like it was copy-pasted from the sounds of "Wind and Wuthering"), but any English band representing the pop-rock and the more melodic prog-rock of the '70s fits perfectly, plus there are Gentle Giant influences in their previous repertoire (in the albums that collect material from the band prior to Lucciole—by the way, the romantic name of the band comes from a brothel; all of this is beautiful—we find two Gentle Giant covers). Even the stunning album cover follows a precise British model, that of Roger Dean (it's practically an "apocryphal" work of his between Yes and, even more so, Uriah Heep). The inspirations, however, are used brilliantly, and the trio Conta-Gaviglio-Vevey creates a world filled with melancholy and nostalgia that pours into every note, which rarely slips into overly sentimental territory ("Non chiudere a chiave le stelle," perhaps). It has so many wonderful melodies and is pure "rock-romantic" with its electric moments, accelerations, guitar solos, and even its more acoustic passages. Sasso's voice, by the way, is one of my favorites in the Italian prog scene. A stunning album.
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