Francesco De Gregori
Sulla strada

Listening to this latest work by the Prince brought to mind the title of the last album by Area from 1978, which marked the end of their most prosperous cycle. “The gods leave, the angry remain”. Indeed. I think of the professional departure of the land and sea navigator Ivano Fossati, which took place only twelve months ago, of the carnal departure of Lucio Dalla just a few days before his sixty-ninth birthday, and of the thoughtful musical farewell of the “Maestrone” from Pavana, Francesco Guccini, who will continue his production cycle with the typewriter and the cobweb-covered guitar hanging in the background.

That post-sixties generation did not spit particularly angry songs; they were, perhaps, certainly uncomfortable and intelligently sarcastic, rather leaving it to the youth of the time, their main interlocutors, to interpret them and vent their torments and anger. They were able to communicate discomfort with a certain English humor, without squawking and vomiting like hens with an egg stuck in the sphincter, spouting useless and trite pseudo-slogans. The angry ones who remain now do not interest me, even though I have not yet figured out who these angry ones of today might be. The rappers? The post-punkers? The new metallers? I leave the decoding of the concept to you.

De Gregori has never been an angry person. Now, like a good craftsman, he continues with his head down, producing new work whenever he feels like it, musically maintaining the same styles and the usual pleasantness, never trite, enriching the lyrics with the help of trumpets, accordions, and lots of strings. I must admit that I never carefully listened to the two previous works “Calypsos” (2006) and “Per brevità chiamato artista” (2008), but certainly in this “Sulla strada”, a title not chosen at random and selected by Francesco after reading the novel of the same name by Jack Kerouac, you can sense in some pieces a musty and romantic smell from the first half of the last century, even though past, present, and future mix intelligently. A record, according to my personal impressions, that somehow connects back to the celebrated “Titanic” published in 1982.

So, with a new captain's hat, that rough, ill, and deluded era is found in “La guerra”, and in the rebetika “Bell’epoque”. There is no particular shadow of nostalgia; rather, there is a propensity to emphasize both History and a historical memory that is slowly fading. The present is full of emotions and content, in the classic style of the Roman storyteller, and is entrusted to the love of “Showtime” and “Falso movimento”, and to the craft in the Caribbean “Omero al Cantagiro” and “Guarda che non sono io”. These last two tracks, in particular, denounce the pervasive emptiness that has struck music in the last decade. The lack of poetry in today's songs and the detachment of the mature singer-songwriter and "stage performer" to concede little, not out of rudeness or spite toward the audience, but not to become an example and icon for his admirers. <<They recognize me for a song, not for who I am, I become their feeling, their image, they stop me while I'm going home with shopping bags in hand and say to me: "I named my daughter Alice in your honor." And I can only reply: "You think you know me, but it’s not me.">>. Francesco then passes the baton to “La ragazza del ‘95”, which has the daunting task of "emulating" the little neighborhood footballer, class of 1968, narrated thirty years earlier in the album “Titanic“. The girl, unlike her older brother or even hypothetical father, does not remain anchored to the provincial reality; the girl from '95 is the imagined future, she is about to turn 18, eager to see the new, inaugurate the journey and explore beyond, but before finally letting her go free, De Gregori reassures us in the "title track" and in “A passo d’uomo”, that he himself continues to chart his course, imprinting the constancy of always moving forward, full steam ahead on his ship, with passion and with the compass firmly held, against storms and southwesterlies of every shade.

As many have grown accustomed today to consuming albums of fifteen songs lasting an hour, filled with banality and fillers, it's pleasing in 2012 to still hear honest craftsmen who, without pretense and with clear and clean messages, desire with a few tracks to make us reflect and dream.

RATING: between 3.5 and 4-