Lucio Battisti
Anima latina

THE REVIEW

Pause for reflection, stop and go.

After a short period of rest (and musical research), Battisti found the path to renewed success: a journey away from Italy, a new way of conceiving music, open doors to the sounds of South America, a bit of courage and innovation, here you have "Anima latina," the most unusual album among all those recorded by Lucio. "Anima latina" is a very important album in Battisti's discography, a sort of watershed between the classical sounds of "I giardini di marzo" and the future pop dance contaminations of "Una donna per amico." Everything is in "Anima latina": love, life, laughter, music, death, religion, cynicism, sarcasm. It's a renewed Battisti, more alive, somehow more brilliant compared to that of "Il nostro caro angelo:" he regains the old genius in writing striking musical scores, and he finds in Mogol a professional as well as, of course, a friend. Eleven tracks, eleven, a flood of emotions and sensations that the Italian music market has rarely been able to deliver. A mix of dreams and nostalgias, an album hated by those who always loved only the beachfire Battisti and loved by those who love music for what it offers and not for what it has been able to offer. Latin, therefore Brazilian sounds, blend admirably with openly Italian music (think of "Abbracciala abbracciali abbracciati") where Battisti tries to surprise us even at the risk of being monotonous and predictable. "Gli uomini celesti" is definitely a beautiful high-class song, but if you listen to Side B with the same song turned inside out like a sock (upbeat rhythm and chewed words), you will realize, without needing too much explanation, that surprise is not a crime.

It might be exaggerated to think that "Anima latina" is Battisti's masterpiece (one must always know and respect the limits), but it's obligatory, and very honest, to state that such albums aren't really made in Italy anymore, not even if you tried. The typically Latin sounds and the instruments not typically Italian are perhaps the highest example of how one can, and should, make music trying to detach as much as possible from the Italic sounds all pizza and mandolin. The song that gives the album its title, "Anima latina," is a masterpiece: six high, almost ecclesiastical minutes, where Battisti's voice, sometimes low sometimes high, seems to blend wonderfully with the drumming music, written by Lucio himself at a moment of evident revelation. "Anima latina" is not a sad album (as someone has defined it), it is a nostalgic album, at times even cheerful (think of the beautiful invention of "Il salame"), genuinely sexual even, leaning towards the most secret eroticism (the sexual metaphor in "Abbracciala abbracciali abbracciati" is very clear). Exceptional is the histrionic vocal maturity achieved by Battisti in the sensational "Macchina del tempo." Some excessive concession to experimentation (it cannot be denied, "Separazione naturale" does not shine as it should), yet the sound system is so exciting as to overshadow more or less evident flaws. It is not, therefore, as already stated, the best Battisti ever, but it is the most experimental, the most courageous, and the most independent one, at times even more extreme than when, in the late Eighties, he will produce the sudden collaboration with Pasquale Panella. Those thin, happy kids, delighted to be able to run blissfully in a field playing trumpets and pan lids, are perhaps the happiest (and most truthful) image of a gray and austere world that would need (God knows how much!) Caribbean rhythms and South American sounds.

And it was only 1975...