Lucio Battisti
Don Giovanni

Having ended his collaboration with Mogol, Battisti ventured into a study of musical research to redefine his new "views," releasing the unfortunate "E Già" in 1982, a work co-written with his wife Grazia Letizia Veronesi (the spiteful, not too spiteful, say that the hands were two, Lucio’s only), where the lexical and partly instrumental poverty unfolds in a fragmented and irreducibly new-age record; critics and the public, in agreement, do not welcome the new Battistian work kindly, so distant from the Mongolian period's works: in "E Già" Battisti is no longer recognized.

In the alleged aporia of means and ideas, driven by great intentions, Lucio meets some months later a curious figure of the Roman literary nobility, a certain Pasquale Panella, a "cursed poet" as shy and jealous of his work as Battisti: some of Panella's works please the singer-songwriter, who, intrigued, wants to try the experimental path through the complex use of words. Under happy auspices, comes out, four years after the last LP, the first work signed by Battisti and Panella, the first work of a partnership that will give birth to four more works: the slimy and penetrating "Don Giovanni." The CD cover presents itself in a cold and anonymous guise, too glacial to encourage the regular fans of the artist from Poggio Bustone: behind, the curious lyrics of the album, which Panella crafted for Battisti before the latter started working on it. This is one of the interesting innovations of Battistian works: no longer Mogol’s inspirations when he listened to the music created by Lucio, but rather the complete submission of the singer to the lyricist, with Battisti's adaptation to Panella's flights of fancy.

The debut doesn't promise bad: "Le Cose Che Pensano" is a beguiling song, enveloping enough to make us believe it speaks of something enchanting, so poignant that it makes one think Lucio hasn't completely broken with his musical past; "Le Cose Che Pensano" seems a delightful piece, but upon closer inspection and listening, it talks about rolling heads, blood, everything that seems like love without being it. This is the new poetics of Battisti, the complete refusal to talk about Mogolian amorous gossip in favor of a ridiculing, through words, of everything that is emotion and pain: the choice of the macabre, the facetious, the jest, identify a new dimension of love, distressing as it is mortifying, a vision that can only lead the feeling to collapse on itself, self-destructing.

In short, if the Molleggiato says he doesn't know how to "talk about love," Lucio no longer "wants" to talk about love. The listener's ear, perfidiously incited by the album's first track, begins to become discouraged with the following "Fatti Un Pianto," an eccentric piece between semblance of sentiment and culinary art, where Panellian interest in wordplay is neatly enucleated, a tool of amusement, perhaps a display in front of the audience's modest possibilities.
Often accused of wanting to mock the public's ignorance, the Neapolitan poet repeats himself in the fifth track of the album, "Equivoci Amici," where cerebral onanism expands abyssally in the paroxysmal listing of "human cases" that like misunderstandings "get misplaced" instead of getting married, work "at creativity" instead of abroad, put "plank" instead of belly: mere ornamental boast on a captivating motif in perfect '80s style.
At this point, after the parenthesis represented by the intricate "Il Doppio del Gioco" and the incomprehensible "Madre Pennuta," Battisti's fan's ear is now decidedly tortured, widely bewildered by that new cauldron of words and impressions that seems not to belong to the singer from Poggio Bustone.
The title track, the sixth track, marks the end of the path undertaken: through the debasement of the figure of Don Giovanni, Battisti comes to demonstrate that it is no longer possible to try and speak the language of love; "Here Don Giovanni, but you tell me who pays you," says the protagonist to whom is presumed to be a prostitute: love ridiculed, a product of mercenary consumption.
After the acoustic "Che Vita Ha Fatto," comes "Il Diluvio," the inevitable conclusion of an album that can only dilute itself in the gloomy uncertainty of a storm.

The new Battisti, the new experimental challenge through the virtuosic use of words and attention to electronic sounds. Between us, dear fan of the 70's Battisti, keep "Don Giovanni," even if you're not in the mood to listen to it again at the moment: one day you'll understand, I hope, that it's not just smoke.
"The truth is in memory and fantasy."