Diaframma
Difficile Da Trovare

Federico Fiumani doesn't care at all about trends or all the useless musical frills that are sold today. He writes songs as if he were out of time. But don't mistake his writing for mere self-indulgence, be careful! Fiumani seeks to preserve and keep intact that breed of singer-songwriters increasingly on the brink of extinction, a hybrid between De André and Paolo Conte dipped in his own personal style at the level of lyrics.

This new chapter of the "diaframmatica" discography, the 15th studio album to be precise, once again shows Fiumani direct and without frills, enriched for the occasion by a highly rock&roll rhythm section. Tracks like "Dura Madre", "La Bella e la Bestia", "La Vita Grigia" reveal all of Fiumani's punk background, who dares to write lyrics at almost 50 years old that seem to have come out of the mind of a sexual maniac: "it's libido, I care for her like a daughter but certainly a daughter you don't love like this" ("La Bella e la Bestia"), or "early morning Milan subway, I look at the girls' faces to see if they made love, there's one looking at me and she seems to have the right face, but at the next stop she gets off, it will end like this" ("Dura Madre").

Songs for women, each dedicated to a love, because as he himself says "women are the best thing in this world" and Federico's hardcore consistency and coherence lies precisely in his letting go of all the protest song fuss, it seems he says in every track "this is who I am, love me or fuck off, I'm not changing for you", if it still makes sense to talk about No Future in punk, Fiumani is the perfect example, because as he says in the ninth track "I like losing, I don't have to prove anything to anyone, I don't suffer" ("Mi piace perdere"). Of course, the wonderful ballads we are used to are not missing, "Dolce Insonnia", "Coda di Paglia", "Giovinezza", and "Il Sogno di Te", even these unconventional to the established market rules, tracks apparently easy-listening that are enriched with beautiful codas and instrumental interludes.

So if you, dear kids with Green Day t-shirts and Rancid tracks in your iPod, are looking for a Punk attitude, you don't have to go far and drool over the little Americans that MTV airs, just look up and start listening to Diaframma. Please.