Luca Carboni
Le band si sciolgono

Life flows like liquid, emotions and memories shriveled, the kicks to the ball in the courtyard, the child he was, time that passes, yellowed leaves, the truth of memory and the mystifications of the present, the fog of Bologna, an accomplice keeper of the most hidden sensations. How long has it been since the verses of our heroes were sung, and we were happy without knowing it, in the anticipation of tomorrow: do you remember the conversations had by the boys on the parapets of the rivers that below lead to the oceans?

Solitary navigators, promised lands, islands of memory: in the background, there is always the sea with its mystery and charm. Luca Carboni's musical quest travels the most suggestive and intriguing path, that of time: examined in filigree, this seems to be the stream of consciousness that inspires the Bolognese singer-songwriter, who returns after five years to propose an album of unreleased songs, some of which are truly noteworthy. Luca still uses electronics ("Signs of Time"), but the poetry does not suffer from it, and he soon demonstrates it in "Flash of Life", intimate and enveloping, an expression of night-time calm, relaxing: the cares of the present dissolve in a journey of the soul that brings us back to her, "naive and rebel angel," and makes us wonder what path her destiny has taken.

There is no rhetoric, but a delicate sense of remembering, echoes of a naive past full of hope, when everything could still happen, and tears fell sweetly without knowing why (as in "I'm Thinking"). The mind gathers in a meager thought, the bitterness of regret mingles with the taste of melancholy, the central theme of the album. In "Bands Break Up" the unstoppable flow of time is captured in its stark objectivity, without adjectives ("years go by, loves end, bands break up... without a reason"). The absence of explanations for everything that happens ("tears rise... to the eyes and then fall... where they come from nobody knows") is a sign of our impotence in the face of events: from actors to puppets, controlled by a string that seems to have no logic. There is not so much anguish, but rather an acknowledgment, an awareness of an incessant becoming that one cannot escape, and thus melancholy: this is how those "sad songs... that we kind of like... without a reason" are born. "Melancholy" is also a song from the album, the best, I believe, along with "Flash of Life": it starts whispering, then gradually grows and finally ignites with fervor. The metaphors of melancholy are truly successful in their incisive simplicity ("melancholy has waves like the sea, it makes you go and then come back, it gently cradles you"... "you dance like a slow dance, you can hold it in silence and feel everything inside"... "it's feeling close even far away, it's traveling while standing still, it's living other lives"... "it's feeling in flight inside airplanes, on illuminated ships, on trains you see pass by"), leading to the bold comparison with happiness ("it almost seems like happiness..."). "A Star Has Fallen" is a romantic and autumnal ballad, where we find references (also in sound) to the sea, as well as in "My Island", an utopia of the artist's inner sentiment, a destination of an imagination that can be more real than the truth. Still, the scent of the '80s with "Thoughts at Sunset", sung in duet with Tiziano Ferro. Left to listen to is "One Forgets", a composed and twilight song.

"Bands Break Up" surpasses the difficult challenge of representing the passage of time and the sensations that accompany it; a mature and intense product, well cared for, an artist who finally dares more than usual. In my opinion, an album worth listening to.