Fabrizio Coppola
Una Vita Nuova

I met Fabrizio Coppola at the Acustica Bookstore in Monza, a cave refuge for those like me who are thirsty for music. Unfortunately, the bookstore is no more, but Coppola is. We then saw each other almost a year later at an unusual concert in Rovigo with other mutual friends. As always happens, we lost touch a bit, and I left Milan for most of 2005, so by chance, while browsing his website, I discovered he was recording a new album. From that day on, I pursued him, just to have a chat. We met at the Christmas party I already talked about. There, I finally got my hands on the new album. For days after that night, it stayed in my car's CD player, and as soon as I got in, I cranked up the volume and off we went.

"Una vita nuova" is a complete album. Musically more mature and less a child of the urgency of "La superficie delle cose", but inspired, with truly incredible peaks. I listened to it carefully, and personally, I consider tracks like "Dove l'acqua muore" a pearl of rare beauty when it comes to the text-music combination. If there's any young director around, buy the rights to this story quickly because developing it would make a beautiful movie, and the soundtrack is already there. Also "1973", a small story of family life, so vivid and real that it made me think of my own personal story, and I'm not ashamed to admit that during one of the more attentive listens, I even got emotional. There are potential hits like "Radici", a beautiful slow rock typical of the New Jersey school around Asbury Park, or "Non ci sei più" which, if I close my eyes, I imagine at Woodstock, in Bob Dylan's house with all the Rolling Stones, talking and drinking wine by the fireplace, and then again the blues of "Una piccola fiamma" that winks at the Australian school of Nick Cave. And then, the metropolitan stories dedicated to Milan (the dying city, the sky over Milan, everything stays the same), the Milan of the losers, those who don't play the stock market, of the lost suburbs that the other Milan, all lights and sequins, doesn't want to see but that exists. Those who struggle to pay the rent at the end of the month, those whose souls are filled with a desire to live, with true feelings and not lies good only for advertising, of daily stories we all live. The indifference of the bar lady when you have breakfast, or the newsstand owner who responds with an annoyed grimace to your good morning. A city with no more identity, or rather, with a thousand identities unfortunately no longer defined. In the eighties, it was the "Milano da bere", today it's nothing anymore. This is Coppola's Milan. It's my, our City. It's the Milan no one wants to see, but it exists. The stories Coppola tells are little journeys around and within the city, its people, its thousand faces, and there's not only sadness or solitude or anger, there are also the joyful choruses of "Esplode la gioia" or for the arrival of "Una vita nuova", a drawn blues with lots of horns that would have the Sun Records people clapping their hands off.

It's a really beautiful album, unusual if you will, but certainly not ugly. We could evoke Springsteen and Nick Cave or our own Ligabue if you like, but I say instead it's Fabrizio Coppola with "Una vita nuova." We could fill an entire page with names related to everything he did on this album, the more or less real influences, everyone can take a little piece, as we all do, after all. But he exists. His vein is nonetheless pure and we hope the mine from which he draws the words of his stories and the notes of his melodies is inexhaustible. He has reached maturity in both lyrics and music, which perhaps lost the immediacy of the raw and acidic rock of his debut, I was saying, to give way to a richer, more refined rock, with pianos and keyboards tinged with Hammond that make your skin crawl, to a more "American" style, more a child of the suburban outskirts of New York, but even in Milan there are homeless people and big shopping malls, life and death of big cities. And he sees this and says it. He observes and describes the dark corners of our daily lives.

Rush to find the album and buy it, it will accompany you on your journeys up and down the A4 or A14 from Milan to wherever you like. Sure, it's not Route 66 or some other highway that slices through the States, but let's enjoy our land, use our eyes to see what's happening around us, and our ears to listen to the stories of our Fabrizio (Carver) Coppola. And if on your journey you send a postcard to someone, write: Greetings from Asbury's Park, Milan, Italy.