Franco Battiato
Fleurs 2

Being Called Battiato Isn't Enough. Yes, because the underlying message of this work seems to be "just being called Battiato is enough for everything, as if he were King Midas, to turn to gold at a mere touch." But no: being called Battiato isn't enough. He is not Mina and not even Joe Cocker, to mention the first two great performers that come to mind. But neither is he Robert Plant or Paul Weller, to name two authors who have undertaken the "mission" of cover songs exclusively as a "true act of love" towards someone else's work. And tragically, he isn't even the Battiato of the other two "Fleurs", albums of evident melancholy but beautiful, heartfelt, deep. Not without some missteps, but almost perfect. Here, unfortunately, we are at the festival of missteps, the triumph of embarrassment, the ecstasy of irrelevance and inappropriateness. Here, there is both a sin of unnecessary baroque style and, above all, pseudointellectual smugness, producing a product of evident uselessness, moreover tragically annoying. Perhaps it is a reaction, but our Francuzzo, after a "high" and "other" masterpiece like "Il Vuoto", a peak hard to reach or surpass in uncompromising austerity, is evidently in a period of lazy indulgence: from the unforgivable (for him as well as for Fossati, let's be clear...) collaboration with Titty Iron, to the half duet with Mango. Thus leading to this sad, senseless, and misplaced album. Not high, lazy, uninspired, where, in my opinion, only the duet with Consoli is worth saving, which manages to be very interesting without, let’s not delude ourselves, being a masterpiece. As for the rest, after a few tracks that can be listened to without wincing too much, the peaks of horror are reached with "The dock of the bay" (it's hard to think of one more out of his range) and "Bridge over troubled water", not to mention Garfunkel, but let's listen to Elvis's version any day. In short: being Battiato and "Battiato-izing" every song is not enough for it to have meaning. And with the rights of Titty Iron, he and Fossati surely line their pockets. Far, very far from the concept of honest art, coherence, and Literary Height that many of our singer-songwriters have accustomed us to in the last three decades. Useless: the Italian singer-songwriter school, mother of a thousand masterpieces and the best poetry of our late 20th century, is evidently descending towards sad, foggy, and compromising plains. The decline of an empire that was beautiful precisely because it was not an empire, but simply a school. The end of a reality that was a dream, for our poor country, now completely dominated, without contrast, by returning illiterates and those cunning enough to have wanted and strongly built this illiteracy. Francuzzo, if you can't resist, who will?