Francesco Renga
Tracce

THE REVIEW

Once upon a time, there was a band. They roamed the depths of the alternative scene and offered a lovely singer-songwriter rock. The singer was a chubby little fellow with very long dreadlocks, very much a Lenny Kravitz of our own kind. At a certain point, the harmony of the group breaks, and the singer decides to step off that train that had brought him decent notoriety until then.
A few years pass, he cuts off his dreads, loses a bit of weight, puts on a good jacket and - much to the horror of former fans - appears at the 2000 Sanremo Music Festival in the newcomers' category. He wins the critics' prize with "Raccontami" (a beautiful piece) and since then has entered my favor. Two years later, another Sanremo and another album, this one. Okay, many Timoria fans will slaughter me for this choice, but with this album, Francesco Renga's voice entered my heart.

Carefully curated in its music and lyrics, nothing on this CD is left to chance: all the tracks are small stories in themselves, which together compose a portrait of an artist's daily life (oops... perhaps too grand a word?) who is emerging from a difficult period and uses music for this reason. And it becomes apparent right from track 2: "Now you know what's up, I no longer need you... I'm already fine".
The singles released and their corresponding videos ("Dove il mondo non c'è più", "Sto già bene", "Tracce di te", "Segreti") give quite a clear idea of the whole work, a melodic CD with a touch of rock at times. Renga has cut the ties with Timoria and his past, no more heavy guitar riffs and no more harsh lyrics (unforgettable "Sangue impazzito", above all) and it shows.
The piece presented at the Ligurian festival is "Tracce di te", dedicated to a mother rediscovered too late, a technically challenging piece where Renga’s vocal range flaunts all its power and almost impresses with the ease of transition between the low tones of the verse and the high notes of the chorus. "Stavo seduto" speaks of a friend found again, while the beautiful "Segreti" is a farewell to a love departing to who knows where.
There’s also a jewel here, and it's "Alba". It's a story in notes about how deeply one can suffer when the ghost of love has taken hold of your life and you cannot (and perhaps do not want to) banish it, during those sleepless nights that keep following one another, alike in their solitude, until you see the dawn rising which also illuminates the decision to free yourself from a heavy burden. I had the "fortune" of discovering it just when something similar was happening to me, and now I feel it's intimately mine, the strength of the words "And the day explodes over the city, with its noise it reaches here, the light spreads and erases the questions you brought... tomorrow I want to live, go out and laugh because I can't take it anymore..." gave me the strength to get out of a dark period and simultaneously served as the soundtrack for unforgettable beautiful moments.

"Vuoto a perdere" is also beautiful, a snapshot of a cold and barren woman, and the concluding "La nuda verità" with its intimate atmosphere, almost unplugged. To close, trailing this track after a few minutes of "darkness," some verses simply accompanied by a few piano chords: "Too many things you do not want, but what you don't know scares you more. And you look at the world, but this is not how one grows, or maybe it is, I don't know... but don't ever go out like this so you will be a star shining and I... will know where you are."

This CD places itself exactly midway between the eponymous solo debut of 2000 (still inevitably under Timoria influences) and the subsequent "Camere con vista" from 2004, when the birth of his daughter Jolanda and the relationship with Ambra Angiolini (oops, a second baby on the way...) adds a bit too much saccharin to his notes, weighing them down and making listening less pleasant and more boring. Certainly, the highest point of the Brescian singer-songwriter's career so far.