Fabrizio De André
Tutti Morimmo A Stento

It often happens that when talking about music among friends, conversations lead to trying to determine what is the ultimate (pretending it is not mathematically immeasurable) for a specific genre or artist, asking intellectually useless questions like "which singer is more capable" or "who is the most violent artist in the history of music." When among these questions arises "what is the most depressive and depressed album of all time," while some respond by mentioning Thergothon, Sopor Aeternus, or Joy Division (all artists and bands that I also consider of great value from that perspective, and also of great artistic ability), I inevitably respond with this "Tutti Morimmo A Stento."

The reason is that this album, both in the stunning poems recited by De André's baritone voice and in the redundant and baroque arrangements, is the darkest and most desperate thing ever recorded up to now. But let's proceed in order.

We are in 1968. The youth protest, as you know better than I do, is exploding; the Age of Aquarius is coming to an end, and modern music is in one of its most fertile periods: the revolution of hard rock is on the doorstep and so is psychedelia, but amid this intense atmosphere, made up of hippies and Vietnam, someone chooses to express their emotions and sensitivity in different music, but not less revolutionary for this: they decide to condense all the pessimism, which was overflowing at that moment, into a music that was equally a child of French chansonniers, overseas songwriters, and medieval cantatas. So they write the pieces, which they were already accustomed to composing as they had already gained experience with fairly easy ballads (which he later would define as "youthful sins"), record, with the help of the Philarmonia Orchestra of Rome, and the same year this masterpiece hits the stores. De André is only 28 years old.

The album consists of nine tracks, five on side "A" and four on side "B", with a total running time of just under 33 minutes. It's worth noting that the first 5 tracks are structured as if it were a single, superb 18-minute suite.

The masterpiece opens with the poignant "Cantico Dei Drogati." It's a baroque piece, where, thanks to masterful orchestration, the singer-songwriter's song elevates to heights worthy of classical music. It is one of the most touching pieces of the author's entire production. Musically, the violins weep gently in the foreground until the voice arrives, with the indispensable acoustic guitar in the background, dominating the scene with an evocative power worthy of the best Cohen and Dylan. The lyrics are a reworked form of the poem "Heroin" by the anarchist blind poet (and future suicide) Riccado Mannerini (1927-1980). The text is very faithful to the original, also because the reworked form has been adapted into rhyming couplets with Mannerini's collaboration. The theme is the inner death of terminal drug addicts, sad souls that are dragged "toward a fire that does not warm them," as the original version of the text says.

After the six minutes of the track, with a crescendo of choruses and string melodies that progressively increase in intensity, an acoustic arpeggio returns, acting as a bridge between the previous track and "Primo Intermezzo," a very dark string and percussion ride that serves more as an atmospheric prelude to the following track, one of the most touching of the Genoese artist's production. "Leggenda Di Natale" thus opens with a simple acoustic guitar, dreamy as only Nick Drake could later do, and simultaneously warm in its intimate progression, complemented by the snowy cold inspired by the choruses that perhaps, thanks to their use (which very much recalls that of Bathory on "One Rode To Asa Bay" and that of Symphony X in the very first part of "Divine Wings Of Tragedy") are the true, magical protagonists of this track, after the voice. The themes addressed are those of the most terrible violence, pedophilia. The track is in fact inspired by "Le Père Noël et La Petite Fille," a piece by the great master Georges Brassens, which deals precisely with a little girl, a stereotype of the purest innocence, led astray by a "Santa Claus" with far from reassuring intentions. The track ends as it began, with the dominant arpeggio of the same, arpeggio that immediately gives way to the riff of the second intermezzo, a track almost entirely similar to the first homonymous one, except for the slightly different lyrics.

And after this brief passage, which we can consider a secret and forgotten path leading to a catacomb, the catacomb itself: "Ballata Degli Impiccati." Musically, we face a country ballad, with noir and angst tones; here almost the entire weight of the accompaniment is entrusted to an acoustic with a dusty sound, interspersed with a melancholy violin that sighs agonized, enhancing the visual aspect of the piece, which, in my opinion, would be perfect as a soundtrack… the string parts of this track might recall the sporadic appearances of the violin in the acoustic interludes of "Solitude" by Candlemass, but I strongly doubt that the Swedish group knows the author, certainly not at the time of "Epic Doomicus Metallicus." The lyrics of the piece, perhaps never so rough in de André's production, are absolutely swollen with resentment, like an infected wound swollen with serum that does not want to heal: there is no forgiveness, not even beyond death, for the executioners; no redemption for the condemned. It's a universe as terrible as it is real. With a "fade-out," the first side of the vinyl thus ends; the second will not measure up but will maintain compositional peaks of considerable height.

Side B thus opens with "Inverno," a melancholic track musically very influenced by jazz, especially regarding the use of very pronounced brass. In terms of lyrics, it's a simple yet sublime seasonal poem, tasked with evoking the terrible magic of winter and the death of nature. With a final cry of the brass, this also fades away to make room for "Girotondo." It is a track with cheerful tones… this apparently, because upon closer inspection, we will discover that the children of the choruses are not happy, but "inebriated with blood and death"; not euphoric because of the game, but excited by the frenzy of war and conquest ("The land is all ours… we will play at war"); the finale, which turns into a (very brief) cacophonic orgy caused by the nursery rhymes of the frenzied children, further proves this. However, despite its moral and conceptual meaning perfectly applying to the record, "Girotondo" is a track that musically clashes significantly, a real punch in the eye compared to the subdued atmospheres of the rest of the record; it indeed constitutes the only lapse of the record (the other possible would be the finale "Recitativo/Corale," for reasons we will explore later).

After the final crescendo of the just-passed track, the third intermezzo opens; it greatly differs from the previous two in both lyrical content and music. While the previous two were very rhythmic orchestral sarabandes, this third is a kind of desolate acoustic minuet with a medieval flavor, played as if it had been composed by a skeleton dressed in rags in the streets of a village decimated by the plague. The fade-out of the track once again marks the beginning of the next track, in this case, the final one: "Recitativo/Corale (Due invocazioni e un atto d'accusa/Leggenda del Re Infelice)" is perhaps the track most loaded with pathos, not a chilling pathos like that of the past tracks, but something spiritually epic, which could have to do with the Nick Cave of "The Good Son": De André becomes the spokesperson for his beloved minorities, and even more, for the souls lost along the way, crawling on a path of death and desolation or "sailing on fragile vessels to face the world's storm." Even in this case, as in the ballad of the hung, his words are not only of forgiveness, but also of indignation awaiting revenge: "Know that death watches over you." Even here, although the music is of great impact, with an emotional force that gives a sense of innate sacredness, from a compositional point there is a small flaw (a flaw, more than anything else): I am talking about the children's choir, the bane and boon of all ambitious musicians, from the present De André to Roger Waters, musicians who often go too far, to venture from baroque to overabundant; indeed, the children's voices are too saccharine, giving a sense more of tackiness than of purity. But never mind, after all, every (and I emphasize "every") album and everything else has a slight detail out of place, and it is probably correct that it is so.

In conclusion, I want to say that we are facing one of the greatest masterpieces of modern music of our time: it is an album truly worthy in all respects, and at least one listen among friends is a must.

See you next time with the other pillars of depressive music.

Rating: 10