Gianni Bonfiglio
Luci spente a Testaccio

There exist musical sculptors shaped and carved by a fatalistic consciousness, inscriptions that survive with an aloof air of feeling like notes on the margin of a page, confident of always being the last on everyone's lips, and that before anyone in time become crumpled and fade. The music is full of these untainted grooves, unknown valleys perpetually desolate.
They have the presumption of not even deserving the dust and humidity of a cellar or attic, you find them on the edges of roads, layers and layers of shards stacked on top of each other, maybe in some stall where they are often sold off.

One of these little-traveled valleys is Luci spente a Testaccio by Gianni Bonfiglio.
Bonfiglio was born in Palermo and then moved definitively to Rome, where he would follow to the letter the styles and ideological current of the classic pseudo-engaged left-wing singer-songwriter of the 70s in Italy, bristly in intentions and barren in results.

To understand the content of the album, you just need to listen to the title track, where a hand extends uncertainly to welcome us with a smoky sax in the background within the neighborhood. Once the fog clears, everything explodes into a place full of life, ideas, and stories, among quarrelsome curses and foul-smelling viscous alleys. There, indeed, we find memories, feelings, ideologies, and disillusionments.

The album cover at first glance seems to come out of the famous Facebook page Pictures from Italian profiles. We are in the most chaotic, disordered, and tiresome place in an Italian house, the kitchen. Looking at it we cannot help but notice an authentic portrait in which we can identify. Casting a glance at the image, we are there with Gianni, mesmerized by the sclerotic blue light of the television trying to undersell all the surrounding colors: the smell of old people's homes, the wall tiles that reach up to the ceiling, the tablecloth stained the night before, we feel the pasta stuck on the plate and the wine bottle pouring its last drop. Only the terrazzo floor is missing.

For the rest, there is not much to say, everything is permeated by a superficial, forced, and almost indifferent interpretation of the songs, seasoned with a subdued voice not particularly biting (mainly due to our artist's poor vocal abilities) and texts born from a not very sharp pen that hardly creates friction with the listener's skin. After all, the album's title is quite eloquent: eliminating the orange of the shiny roads at night that gives meaning to cursing and the stench of urine, all the senses are numbed and debased, you might as well stay at home in front of the television.

In short, a shabby and mediocre album.
Mediocre as any smoky and dark evening in Testaccio.
There's nothing left but to drink the last beer and head home, in relief of a new day.

“Certainly, the end caught us like this
A little distracted
Forget about band and banner
The train has arrived”