Fabio Concato
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THE REVIEW

Five years ago, Fabio Concato gifted us with what is still his latest album of original songs. For as long as 11 years, from 2001 to 2012, the Milanese singer-songwriter did not release a record of new tracks. An incredible, unusual period, considering the standards of the music industry. Eleven years interrupted only by the live album "Voilà" and the anthology "Oltre il giardino," with a participation in Sanremo 2007. Thanks in part to psychological support, Piccaluga (his real surname) produced an album of 11 new tracks, which also represent a summary of his career and his way of making music, with elements of emotion, irony, and the indispensable jazz vein. "L'altro di me" is the programmatic manifesto of his return and of finding again a creative vein that had been drained, to the point of discussing the "blank page syndrome" in interviews. "Stazione Nord" is a tribute to his Milan, while the title track, like "Oltre il giardino" before, deals with the difficulty of losing a job in mature age. "To know how to imagine and understand, it's all here..." The fourth track pays homage to France and the Papier Mais cigarettes, the version of the Gitanes, which have always been the cigarettes of the wealthy, in yellow paper to imitate the paper plants with which the popular classes rolled tobacco. It is a well-achieved picture of nostalgia. Then there's the memory of a lost friend in "Carlo che sorride" and the gratitude to music in "Se non fosse per la musica," where Fabio states he really doesn't know what he would have done, declaring "to not know how to do anything." In his youth, he enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine to become a psychiatrist, but with unsatisfactory results. "Non smetto di aspettarti" is the great romantic song one expects in an album by the singer-songwriter of "M’innamoro davvero" and "Domenica bestiale." There is also no lack of the classic ironic sketch, and here we have "Breve racconto di moto," which with cabaret-like speech and some swear words represents the 2012 version of songs like "Rosalina" and "A Dean Martin." "Il filo" is a request to extend the thread of life, a song of existential assessment. "Sant'Anna (di Stazzema)" with simple words and without ever explicitly mentioning, apart from the title, the massacre that the Nazis committed on August 12, 1944, honors the victims: "I bow to remember," before a solo that knows of tears and commemoration. This elegant product closes with "Un trenino nel petto," the feeling that a person experiences when they (re)fall in love, completing the sentimentality of "Non smetto di aspettarti." On the cover, a Concato touching his glasses covered by computer codes, codes which are also present on the record to listen to five historic songs of the singer-songwriter, performed with voice and guitar, to give something extra after such a long absence. That's all.