•
Rating: Uh-oh! We are notified that this review also appears (in whole or in part) on http://www.meltinpotonweb.com/
Le Luci della Centrale Elettrica is Vasco Brondi, a twenty-four-year-old singer-songwriter from Ferrara and a fascinating promise of the Italian music scene; almost universally acclaimed by critics and admired by a growing crowd of enthusiasts.
Listening to him is an experience. A flow of poisoned images of a peripheral and provincial, toxic, post-industrial, forgotten reality: a series of heartbreaking photographs, more or less visionary, universally desperate. And above all, the ability to translate these images into music, which reproduces and accompanies the mood, sometimes with mournful delicacy and other times with accelerations of resigned violence.
Even on stage, as in the celebrated debut album, the song structure is sparse and essential (voice, acoustic guitar, electric guitar played by his producer Giorgio Canali, and effects), but the melodic fabric is solid, penetrating; live, the emotional impact is even more powerful.
Vasco Brondi plays his Canzoni da Spiaggia Deturpata in front of a concentrated and numerous audience: the Circolo degli Artisti’s hall is completely filled for this young artist from Italy's mechanical province (and partially empties when he leaves the stage to ex-CCCP Massimo Zamboni); a considerable result for a singer-songwriter who still enjoys an "underground" reputation, on a Wednesday evening, no less.
He moves with a humble demeanor, he's shy and kind; self-deprecating when he presents Per Combattere l'Acne (splendid) as the next summer hit and when he greets the audience, introducing the last piece: "You're really great people, I'm sorry to cut you down with this song".
The brief concert at the Circolo degli Artisti, leaves the impression of an artist with extraordinary expressive potential, driven by bursts of punk and nihilistic energy that recall Lindo Ferretti of CCCP and with a vocal timbre that often recalls Rino Gaetano, although in narrating the dilapidated Italy of "these damn zero years," his voice is completely devoid of the playful irony that was the Calabrian singer-songwriter's.
It is precisely with a quote from Gaetano that his live set closes, a refrain from Il cielo è sempre più blu inserted into a gloomy and dizzying musical spiral (Nei Garage a Milano Nord), which ends with the obsessive repetition of the line "Chi muore al lavoro".
This is Vasco Brondi: perhaps the ambition to tell his stories through incessant montaging of sharp and distinct images is risky, at times forced, when he dwells on less evocative visions, or so painful as to be almost caricatured. Perhaps his songs are tied by an atmosphere and mood that in the long run might seem monochromatic and stifling.
But one cannot deny the sincere, if despairing, energy of his lyrics, nor the brilliance of many of his melodic solutions; and if you compare his work with that of other arrogant, overrated, and self-important artists like (a random name) Afterhours, it seems evident that Le Luci della Centrale Elettrica is already one of the best things to happen to Italian music in recent times.
Loading comments slowly
