Il Genio
Vivere Negli Anni X

The second album by Il Genio was released in 2010, titled "Vivere negli anni X," and it opens with a joyful march that unfolds the duo's programmatic manifesto in just a few minutes: complicit sounds, symbols, voices, scandals, and futile phrases all presented by a pair of Bonnie & Clyde in close confidence, subtle lasciviousness. Essentially, Gianluca De Rubertis & Alessandra Contini present themselves as a variant aujourd'hui of Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot: musically, there's the same post-sex atmosphere, but the lyrics avoid explicitness (which was present in their first eponymous album) to appear as intricate networks of taste between surreal and dada with frequent wordplays, continuous enjambments, variations of accents, indefinite commas, and a thousand other tricks to give a double or triple meaning to the sung words. In short, indeed, complicit sounds.

After the huge success of "Pop porno" in 2008, the Pugliese duo slightly steers away from Simona Ventura to embark on to a decidedly refined pop, too refined, so refined that it led to a significant commercial flop. A great shame, because "Vivere negli anni X" is more beautiful than "Il Genio": if in the first album the duo merely repeated the style of 1960s French pop and the Shibuya kei period of Kahimi Karie (especially the EP I am a kitten), in their second album they manage to surpass the mere level of imitation to reach a decidedly more personal and appreciable one. "Il Genio" was truly a pleasure to listen to, but to an ear already acquainted with those sounds, the album appeared as an exercise in style, a sort of true-to-life copy, the attempt to bring easy listening to a wide audience, to succeed where Montefiori Cocktail did not; since the average Italian ear knows nothing of this stuff, it mistakenly received them as a total novelty. Here, with "Vivere negli anni X," we witness a certain maturation: maintaining the aspect of enormous sonic pleasure, there's a vague and continuous sense of refined bistro sipping wine and simultaneously of a sordid brothel after consummation, the arrangements are more complex and layered, the repartee between Gianluca and Alessandra is at very high levels (excellent Cosa dubiti), and although they often embark on rather enigmatic moments (from Cosa pensi: «hands to the wind of chimera / calling loudly, but without air / proving that the night is only vanity / time to time and drenched in wind»), the words/music blend generally works very well, or at least well enough that the listener doesn't question even the most insane lyrics: this is easy listening. Several songs are embellished with a brief post-chorus instrumental part, rocking and antithetical to the rest of the song where violins and well-arranged brass float well, and overall, the entire production is very well-crafted.

But if "Vivere negli anni X" is, therefore, truly a well-made album, then why did it achieve infinitely less success than its predecessor? Why did Pop porno (probably their worst song) become a hit while instead Amore chiama Terra (one of their best) didn't even become a single? This opens up a discourse that is too vast, remote, and intricate, involving the obscure mechanisms of Italian radio and the music industry, committed to promoting stuff already brought to light through other media (especially television) while neglecting more valid artists who, precisely because they lack visibility on multiple fronts, need more support. Il Genio is a purely indie group that had fifteen minutes of immense fame: now that they are out of it, their quality has not diminished but has even increased. We hope the music industry realizes this... or maybe not, actually.