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Rating: Evocante, stage name of Vincenzo Greco, is a name that is almost unknown to most, but this lack of fame is undeserved because, for some years now, he has been releasing records of a certain depth, demonstrating a remarkable artistic vision. The lyrics are very beautiful and evocative, and there is a fine musical versatility (he plays a lot with music genres, mixes them, lets them interact). He’s a pupil of Franco Battiato, but doesn’t stop at him, nor does he simply imitate him, having other references as well (C.S.I., Bluvertigo, Subsonica) and adding a lot of his own personality.
All’improvviso. Canzoni lievi is an album, his most singer-songwriter-like record, focused on a central theme: the return of light after moments of darkness, which can mean anything from simple sadness to real depression, or those times when we seem to lose ourselves. It seems to be an album that wants to support those who are in such moments, not simply by telling them that “all’improvviso tornerà la luce” but by somehow making this light actually emerge, and trying to find meaning even in dark times, which are sometimes needed to go deeper into ourselves. The sound is gentle, almost like a caress, but in some songs everything gets harder and more hypnotic, like in …tornerà la luce, where you can also hear the voice of Vittorio Gassman telling how he got out of depression. The title track is brilliantly done, moving through intimate sounds and a finale that grows increasingly pulsating and compelling to musically recount the return of the light. There’s a track that, in a wider landscape, would surely be a hit, such as Di lunedì, followed by Diario di bordo, which glides along like a boat on calm waters. The track Salvami is intensely inward and intimate, approaching its effect by means of subtraction. Then there are two very beautiful covers that are worlds apart, like Parigi by the forgotten Enzo Carella, and Sidun by the legendary Fabrizio De André, translated into Italian and made lysergic, psychedelic, almost Pink Floyd-esque (in the piano you can catch echoes of A great gig in the sky).
It’s somewhat characteristic of Vincenzo Greco to unite distant things, either to make them seem less far apart than we think or, as in this case, to switch register quickly so as not to bore the listener. Blending things together is also the approach he uses in his music books; he has published one on Battiato that is very in-depth and genuinely original (there are plenty of them, maybe too many) in terms of both structure and content. Recently he released another, Il tempo moderno e i suoi inganni. Riflessioni critiche in Ferretti, De André, Battiato, Waters, which is philosophical and almost political in tone: a particular read, nearly a shaking of the reader’s conscience about certain things we never think about.
Returning to the album, perhaps the most beautiful track is Raccontami di te, which comes near the end, and feels like traveling among the clouds and light tales, confirming the aptness of the subtitle: these truly are “canzoni lievi,” but “light” does not mean superficial. The album closes with a piece of genuine classical music that, together with the musical interludes every two songs (which perfectly set the mood for the listener), paves the way for an instrumental album released shortly after, A quiet day, which I still have to listen to properly and may review here at some point.
In short, I’m glad to have discovered this artist, who fully recovers the tradition of the Italian songwriters, updating it with everything that's come since in terms of electro-rock and electro-prog, even though on this album there’s little rock (in his other works there’s more, especially Siamo esseri emozionali, an electro-prog-rock journey with some touches of songwriting, which never hurts).
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