Francesco Guccini
D'amore di morte e di altre sciocchezze

"But time, time, who gives it back to me?
who gives me back those seasons
of glass and sand, who takes back
the anger and the gesture, women and songs
the lost friends, the devoured books
the plain joy of appetites
the healthy thirst of the thirsty
the blind faith in poor myths..."

Until the unexpected and forceful entry of these verses, "Lettera" is a somewhat unusual ballad for Guccini, a nice rock piece quite driven, over which a series of images and impressions of everyday life flow, overall reassuring. But at 56, the worm of passing time starts to take hold, and in the end, the anguish explodes in the quoted verses. It is the same anguish that will dominate the subsequent "Stagioni," the feeling that "the sad end of the game" is inevitably approaching. The mature, almost old Guccini has just lost two important friends (one of whom is Bonvi, the creator of the "Sturmtruppen"), much like Neil Young's "Tonight's The Night", but his reaction, at least as it comes across in this album, is not of tired despair.

The cover itself seems like a challenge: a serious and sulky Guccini confronts the posters of Guccini from twenty years earlier head-on, with no desire to give up. Death is also treated in "Il caduto", the posthumous lament of a highlander who laments being buried in an anonymous plain where the profile of a mountain cannot be seen, where even the snow is different from what he knew.
At this point, someone might start to touch wood or make other superstitions, so better to move on to the topic of "Love," which in this album, by the way, has much more space. Love is the theme of the album's masterpiece, "Cyrano", on one hand, a raw and merciless invective against the world of those "with the short nose", the usual amorphous and conformist flock, on the other, a dramatic confession of the moments when this modern "cadet of Gascony" is left alone with himself. But the love for Rossana will know how to overcome even the apparent hardness and malice of Cyrano. The music is particularly inspired, which is unbelievable when you think that the author is the infamous Bigazzi, touched by divine grace on this occasion, yet sadly known in my area mainly for having contributed to creating monsters like Pupo and Masini.

"Quattro stracci", an excellent and energetic folk-rock ballad with a Dylan-esque approach, talks about a love that has ended due to the great distance between the author's frankness (certainly autobiographical) and the woman's falsely intellectual superficialities once loved. "Vorrei" seems incredible to have been born during such a troubled time for Guccini: in this most tender slow piece, you can feel the total joy of falling in love. Everything transmits and symbolizes love: the stones, the roads, the doorsteps, even the modest tufts of wall-rue, an insignificant herb that grows around walls. One of the most serene episodes in the entire career of a songwriter known for his perpetual dissatisfaction. More typically Guccinian joy is found in "Stelle", where the enchantment in front of the starry sky is disturbed by the sense of man's smallness, as he gets lost in it (just like the Portuguese girl in front of the immense Atlantic).
Since the album's title says it also deals with "nonsense," here comes "I fichi", a parody of the well-known song by the "Crauti" ("I do not understand people... who do not like figs..."). Pure cabaret, as amusing as Guccini often is in concert, closes this excellent album as an extraneous appendix, yet overall serves as a counterbalance to the seriousness of Guccini's lyrics, as always charged with meanings and overflowing with ideas.