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"A child of the 50s, with a nose not yet transformed by a collision with a soccer field goalpost, gazes at us amusedly from the cover. That same child, just over thirty years older, who, with the record spun, sings to us about the Universe depicted behind him."
Franco Battiato spent the first half of the 80s at the top of the sales charts, with a series of brilliant and provocative albums and a vast amount of material, songs, but also entire albums, written for others.
In 1987, after a year of discographic hiatus, he composed and staged an opera, "Genesi", with which he somehow returned to the experimentation he had abandoned at the end of the 70s. At that historical moment, he even mentioned he might leave pop music; just a year later, however, a new record hits the stores, a work destined to mark a turning point (not the only one) in the career of the Catanese songwriter: "Fisiognomica."
'My hands continued to gravitate towards lighter material, the songs' Battiato would recall a few years later. And that it's a record born from a wave of strong inspiration, is beyond any doubt, just as it is certain that this same inspiration carried with it a certain desire for change. The songs making up the album are a decisive shift, a leap toward moments of the highest spirituality: for the first time, delicate and profound topics such as the search for the Sacred are tackled by Battiato without hesitation, with complex simplicity and at the same time with poetry, accompanied by highly sophisticated melodies not aimed at easy listening. And yet, of an enchanting beauty.
It would suffice to mention "E ti vengo a cercare", the most famous song of the album, a delicate ode to the search for the beloved, which in reality is nothing but the search for the Divine, a combination of lyrics and music among the most intense and successful of Battiato's entire career. Or other gleaming gems, "Nomadi", written by his friend Juri Camisasca; "Veni l'autunnu", which lets us breathe in the air of past Sicilian seasons; the poetry of solitude in "Secondo imbrunire"; the disenchanted yet moved gaze on youthful feelings in "Il mito dell'amore"... there isn't a weak moment in "Fisiognomica", everything is permeated with vivid and intense memories, spirituality, emotions distilled into music, especially a tension toward the transcendent that will also characterize Battiato's subsequent works, at least until "Caffè de la paix".
The album, or rather this mystical journey, closes with "L'oceano di silenzio" where a balance between research, popular simplicity, and classical austerity seems almost magically achieved, thanks to a meditative atmosphere that puts the listener in a state of ethereal suspension, concluding the album leaving in the mind, and in the heart, the sensation of a masterpiece.
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