Gino Vannelli
Brother To Brother

THE REVIEW

It's not just good wine that improves with age... Think of vintage guitars, the so-called Vintage guitars, like a '57 Fender Stratocaster or a '58 Gibson Les Paul; or, certain beautiful twenty-year-old girls who do not yet possess the maturity or sensuality that a beautiful forty-year-old woman can boast; or (if it's music we're talking about, as it is in this case), works so pioneering that what seemed cold, perhaps even glacial twenty or thirty years ago, appears much more understandable and close today. Okay, maybe this isn't exactly the case with this album, but I've been looking for an opportunity to start with a bang for some time, have the good heart to forgive me (in any case, the fact that the album in question has aged well is a fact).

So, it was 1978, Gino Vannelli had already recorded five albums, all more or less successful; however, the masterpiece was still missing, or rather the album capable of best synthesizing all his innate qualities as a musician and singer; hence comes "Brother to Brother" which, along with the subsequent "Nightwalker", perhaps represents the pinnacle of the Italian-Canadian singer-songwriter's musical career.
The album opens with the sign of rock, with a piece as aggressive as it is sophisticated like “Appaloosa”, with the fluid solos of Carlos Rios (guitar) and the present drums marking the rhythm of the song. It continues with “The River Must Flow”, another decidedly well-crafted song, with Vannelli's falsetto contrasting nicely with the female chorus intent on rhythmically marking the title words.
But it is with the following pieces that Vannelli gives his best; “I Just Wanna Stop”, which later became a classic (written by our protagonist's brother, Ross Vannelli) might seem at first listen like a piece written specifically to climb the charts, but it is, in fact, a very refined ballad, where Ernie Watts delivers a saxophone solo towards the end that sends shivers down the spine... A truly unique feeling!

Also worth mentioning are the beautiful “Feel Like Flying”, which almost repeats the emotional crescendo of “I Just Wanna Stop” and the title-track, where a powerful instrumental interlude (complete with a virtuosic electric bass solo by Jimmy Haslip that wouldn't even make the most hardcore Dream Theater fan frown) disrupts the song's flow, bewildering the listener, only to gently accompany them back to the melodic path thanks to the subsequent “Wheels of Life”, a piece endowed with extraordinary melodic richness.
The album closes with “The Evil Eye” (perhaps the album's weakest track) and the melancholic “People I Belong To” (of completely different substance), which Gino dedicates to his relatives, friends, and loved ones.

The highly sophisticated sound architectures of this album make it a unique work in its field even today, and the fact that perhaps no one has yet managed to reach it throughout all this time certainly makes one reflect.
It does not represent just the most significant achievement in Vannelli's excellent discography, it is also one of the highest peaks ever reached by the genre it belongs to.