Enrico Ruggeri
Polvere

When I saw that there were very few reviews of Enrico Ruggeri on this site, I wanted to fix that, maybe I'll manage to convince someone to follow me. You see, because I consider the artist in question to be the greatest Italian singer, obviously after the sacred trinity of De Andrè-Battisti-Battiato.

An artist always not very satisfied from a commercial point (he couldn't sell himself, in the good sense of the term, to the general public) and ostracized by certain pseudo-intellectual critics because of his political ideas. Sure, he did have some success, some critics appreciated him, but always very little compared to other musicians with evidently inferior artistic merits. They call Vasco and Ligabue rockers, they have their merits, but Ruggeri was the only representative of the Italian punk scene with his Decibel and was one of the few to combine hard and pure rock with lyrics, not to say committed (apart from some magnificent exceptions most are love songs), but still very beautiful. They all call him a fascist, but he was the first singer to speak in his own song about a transsexual. A singer with a very particular timbre, a composer with an innate sense of melody, a man with a double musical personality, one more rock and one very much reminiscent of the French chansonniers. I recommend to everyone the first part of his career, the more rock one, those interested can also delve into the subsequent, more melodic phase: they will have pleasant surprises (like the beautiful Rien Ne Vas Plus).

Released after the adventure with Decibel and his solo debut accompanied by complicated legal controversies related to the record company, it is one of his most representative albums, as well as one of his best works.

The album is a set of electronic new-wave songs in Ultravox style (Fuoco Sui Giocattoli, Gerarchie) but where the guitar plays a role no less important than that of the keyboards (credit to Luigi Schiavone who, from that moment on, became his faithful companion), a characteristic of the genre, but where there is also room for brass instruments (Polaroide).

The title track is something magnificent, a bass line like few seen in Italy, a hypnotic melody and lyrics that have nothing to envy to those of the best Mogol: a masterpiece, definitely to be included among the twenty most beautiful Italian songs of all time.

The rest of the album has no dead spots (which is not insignificant) and has some remarkable peaks beyond the title track: the opening Va Tutto Bene, the already mentioned Fuoco Sui Giocattoli, and the declaration of intent Salviamo Milano.

Highly recommended, even though his peak will be reached with the subsequent Tutto Scorre.