Francesco Bianconi
Forever

“I know that I came from the pussy and I know that I want to go back there”.

As a solo artist, Bianconi sheds the pop-rock frills and that carefully constructed veneer to get to the core of his feelings. Goodness, the abyss, pussy, love, god. Few fundamental concepts are tackled without easy nihilism. Approached with caution, as if it were the first time. And this is the beautiful lyrical novelty he was already advancing in the latest albums with Baustelle.

But unlike those works, which were full of somewhat disposable, filler images, here every word counts, is thought and rethought, savored like a liqueur of cognitive suffering. And everything else crowns the voice: bass and drums fall silent, strings, and piano gently color the free spaces and settle right after because without the noise of music, words take on another importance. Another magnetism.

Bianconi continues the work of deconstructing the rhetorical pessimism that he himself had greatly favored (albeit with quality contributions) in the previous two decades, only to detach from it in front of the standard use that had now invaded indie music and generally the “alternative” slice of Western thought. Today there's nothing more rhetorical than saying life sucks.

And so, he, a wild animal, shuns the easy ailments of life like the easy beats of the '80s. He makes an album of very measured content and a lot of beautiful music, which humbly presents itself to our listening. Almost sing-song melodies, deliberately ungainly, with glaringly imperfect metrics and few choruses, little desire to facilitate listening and understanding. We must also make the journey to wisdom; it cannot be given to us just like that. Everyone has their own, abyss.

Half of the songs carry the strongest meanings, the others are a valuable stylistic sideline, which is another surprise: truly non-trivial atmospheres, jazzy, smelling of an exotic melancholy. Vesper melodies, composed, a cathedral resonates with bittersweet tones. In the song sung in Arabic, the suggestion touches the ceiling. The voices of Kazu Makino (Blonde Redhead), Hindi Zahra (Moroccan-French singer and actress), and Eleanor Friedberger (The Fiery Furnaces) provide the right respite from Bianconi’s challenging tones.

An (apparently) subtractive work also to maximize the content of the main songs, but the care in constructing the musical scenarios is painstaking, even in subtraction. It's like the invisible part of great cinema that you don't know you're seeing, but your eye does. Here, it works the same way with listening. And everything leads to those four or five moments when the Eucharist we were seeking is delivered, if we are ready to receive it.

The contents of this album represent significant achievements for our songwriter’s vein and for the entire scene. A breaking of the fourth wall that at its best recalls the Gucciniana straightforwardness, as when he says: “From that day I inhabit a backdrop of fear / I look at the world without the eyes I wish / Because I know men well / I tell their demons / But I can't live with mine / Because I punctually avoid the abyss / For fear of encountering it when the day comes / Because I get paid to write / I'm good at pretending / To make a good impression in society / At the atrocity exhibition.”

The anti-rhetorical and deliberately disturbing force of the album is sealed in the use of the word “pussy” right in the heart of the chorus of Certi uomini, a mockery of good manners and the many songs that would like to break taboos, but in reality, do nothing more than conform to prevailing taste.