Giorgio Poi
Fa Niente

Bomba Dischi is an eclectic record label.
In their roster, you'll find Carl Brave X Franco126, who are the Zero Assoluto's answer to the Dark Polo Gang; John Canoe, who have taken a liking to Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, and the new garage scene; Jennifer Gentle, who are simply the Jennifer Gentle; Germanò, who fills a void possibly left by Tiromancino; Boxerin Club, an unappealing cross between Vampire Weekend and Is Tropical, conceived in an orgy of all those indie folk bands that do wooohooo in chorus with beards; Bamboo, doing electroclash in 2017; Grande Cuore, who released a single italodisco on Easter Monday, titled Carlo Verdone; Departure Ave., who are actually beautiful and I don't want to dismiss them like that; Lamusa, who does kind of lo-fi instrumental chillwave and has released the perfect video; Adriano Viterbini, who is good at playing the guitar; and other things.

Among them, the standout names are Calcutta and Pop X. Two nostalgia acts quite different from each other, both nonetheless successful.
The first is a Roman-style singer-songwriter, fairly honest and naïve, highly singable and a bit off-key between Venditti and De Gregori, who with his piano and guitar ballads has won over legions of unsightly, love-stricken people with a shower for five in their apartment. He writes anthems for no one in particular, thus for everyone.
The latter used to do charming 8bit things and are now Paps'n'Skar. Those of stasera la luna ci porterà fortuna la luna. They have found their ideal place in glamorous trash playlists, playing on lyrical cynicism devoid of meanings, capable of catchy shocks like dammi una lametta che mi taglio le vene.

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In the opening passages of Retromania, Simon Reynolds elaborates on the concept of nostalgia, noting that initially, it referred to a melancholic state of mind tied to topical separation, not yet the chronological one commonly understood today. Concluding that the nostalgia for what once was is a relatively recent feeling, typically twentieth and nineteenth-century. Apart from regrets for golden ages in terms of morality and customs, which are well-rooted in the history of human thought.

The debut album of Giorgio Poi is imbued with that original, topical sense of nostalgia.
Poi fell in love with institutional Italian singer-songwriting not only from then but from elsewhere: from London, where he orchestrated the Vadoinmessico and Cairobi within five years, pop projects with psychedelic hues, akin to those Jennifer Gentle, his recent label mates.
If it's true that nostalgia acts are currently in vogue even in the musical realm, an album like Fa Niente is a surefire hit, striking a balance between the cultured and the popular, from Piero Ciampi to Vasco Rossi. But genuine, because it's so philological it sacrifices Poi himself to the role of a humble craftsman of song, without the cult aura that has consecrated Calcutta, Paradiso, and Contessa to the status of Italian indie heroes, and thus memes. No memes on Giorgio Poi: he doesn't lend himself. His approach to drama and insignificant quotidian, from what we are allowed to deduce from his lyrics, is that of someone who processes lived experiences to build metaphors and redundancies to sing, closing the circle.

If you pay attention, the sea is a fundamental element in the lyrical construction of nostalgia because it encapsulates its two deep meanings: both the sense of distance and journey, and that of vacation, a circumscribed time loaded or unloaded with events, opposed to a daily life that is either flat or chaotic.
The opening song, L'Abbronzatura, explicitly recalls drowning and the beach envisioned in winter, and Giorgio Poi has covered Il mare d'inverno.
Paracadute, the most beautiful and perhaps, vaguely, the most intimate piece, is accompanied by the sound of the waves.
The chorus of Le foto non me le fai mai goes:

As there is the sea
very good for you and beautiful to look at,
it moves so much
that you don't see it but it's twice the same,
eating ice cream
is a goal to focus on
to catch your breath
with a professional camera

So, the sea, extended metaphors, semantic ambivalences somewhat akin to Rino Gaetano. Poi denies everything and says without fear and without nostalgia/returning from the sea/without even a photo. But don't be fooled.

On the other side, there is the city with Gadda-esque engineering psychosis in Tubature, more simply the chaos and traffic in Doppio nodo, which also finds solace in going to Rimini to see the sea.

Fa Niente is also - perhaps above all - a well-played album, and this is what initially won us over. Everything started with the pentatonic stolen from who knows where in Acqua minerale, for its structure and illuminated supporting bassline, the heavy heir to Amarsi un po', which is the definitive Italian song*, timeless and all the beautiful things that come to mind about a song, which I recently heard live, distorted by C+C=Maxigross.
The bass is a dynamic protagonist, the undisputed driving force of a tightly arranged, highly compressed album, in a strict power trio format.
Paradoxically, for both Vadoinmessico and Cairobi, Giorgio Poi uses a greater variety of instruments, sometimes even unusual ones; whereas for these Italian pop structures, traditionally inclined towards orchestral arrangements, he has chosen a sober and minimal line, uniform in effects - chorus and reverb at full throttle - and without peaks in vocal interpretation: Poi sings in a standard nasal tone**, already robot-like on its own, filtered with a vocoder, I believe, probably tuned. He allows himself just a few nice falsettos, avoiding octave jumps and exaggerated Vasco Rossi-style antics, though the syntactic imprint and occasional interjections of sighs and moans remain strong.
I want to trust a diploma in jazz guitar on his resume, and the video for Tubature, where Poi also plays bass and drums - and you can tell he knows how to play them - to say that the composition is his work in every detail. Damn exaggerated, Giorgio, well done.

It was released by Bomba Dischi and has the Rocco Granata Marina effect, for the history of topical nostalgia.
I've memorized some of the songs, especially Niente di strano, with Marinelli in the video. Maybe start there.

*Discuss.
**Citations and semi-citations from Offlaga are obnoxious, and I can't stop.