holdencaulfield

Long live Uncle Ranaldo!

A wonderful and painful CD. I won't give you 5 in the review because I also detest all those (pseudo)intellectual parentheses or the (s)compositions of words. Or rather, the game is nice once, twice, but after a while it shows the weakness of the affectation. Forgive me.

Crazy. Indeed, where has Lurie gone?

Uff. This is a syndrome. "Italian musicians are not original; they fish from elsewhere and barely rework." What a bore, guys, change the tune. Originality is a factor highly influenced by personal (and distorted) subjective views. If someone starts off with that mindset, they won’t recognize originality in an Italian album even if it bites them in the ass. Feel free to indulge in your foreigner-worshiping beliefs. I hope you’re not in a band or playing music, because otherwise, the syndrome is downright Freudian.

A very beautiful CD in terms of potential, but spoiled by somewhat outdated and stale arrangements. It deserves a refresh. "Mimosa," on the other hand, is a gorgeous song.

By the way, odradek, I completely agree with you as I believe I have already written somewhere else where you, patient, were remembering the same things.. Ah, the spirit of dialectics.. :D

I absolutely did not want to hold a trial or attack anyone. It just irritates me when it comes to rankings and forced comparisons (between those who are now established icons and those who are still finding their footing). Odradek: I obviously didn’t mean to comment on anyone's intelligence, especially since the greatest genius can also do the biggest foolishness. However, if I believe that a certain way of thinking is not particularly bright, I will say so, just as I will call blind people blind and strongly avoid the hypocritical non-sighted. I obviously don’t want to offend anyone, and if I have, I apologize. As Totò used to say, sometimes politeness is just cowardice... :) Ajeje: I disagree, especially with the last album, as Capossela has completely lost the mannerism he clearly had at the beginning (the first two albums, let’s say). I am curiously awaiting the next one, to see if I was wrong or not.

Uh, grass, the rating for the review was for the review itself, which didn’t excite me (even though the rating was exaggerated, hang on, I’m raising it) besides the fact that all in all I agree with you (apart from the fact that I prefer it to be popular rather than jazzy). The comment was about the comments. Oki?
ajeje: the point is simple: Waits is above Capossela, and okay, but it’s pointless to remind us at every turn. He himself admits to idolizing him, but I also believe he has now distanced himself from that. I adore Waits, but I swear that listening to crank songs, all I see is the ancient legacy, like the inheritance of fathers. The "everything has been heard before" is also an old album. According to many, everything has already been said and done (and written). Postmodernism is the era of rehashing and citation; every artistic act necessarily starts from something else to then develop independently. Bet you that in ten years you won’t find anything in Capossela that is still Waits? Unless he kicks the bucket from cirrhosis before, of course...

I don’t agree. I believe that Capossela has indeed drawn inspiration from various Waits and Canteen, but he’s already in a completely different place. If you look at "Canzoni a manovella," you’ll see that, apart from the attitude, there’s very little left of Waits. There’s no longer room for metropolitan paintings or marginal stories; Capossela has now thrown himself headfirst into a literary (and yes) baroque world, whose most profound roots are in the patafisica of Jarry. Musically, he has absorbed European folk influences, and also Italian ones, so he doesn’t blindly follow Waits, but draws inspiration from him (everyone has their models) in order to play with material that is closer to his own sensibility (thankfully, he’s moving away from the jazz blues of his early days).
But come on, he’s not even forty and he’s already producing things like "Canzoni a manovella"... It seems foolish to compare him to someone like the good Waits who has decades of career behind him. Give him time and stop shooting him down just for the sake of it.

Uhm.. live they are muuuch crazier, able to stretch a song for a good twenty minutes (making even the most hardened intellectuals shake their butts). If they come your way, make sure to drop by..