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Rating:
As a diehard Battisti fan (Mogol period, Panella period—for me it's the same, I find both wonderful), I lament and take my blame. I've always underestimated this album, considering it a pink apostrophe between the words "Canto libero" and "Anima latina," so much so that I don't even have it on CD (and I have all of Battisti's on CD), but thanks to Spotify's algorithm, I listened to it again, after a lifetime, a week ago. And I called myself a fool because underestimating something like this is foolish. Especially given the premises.
The album comes out a year after "Il mio canto libero," and goes to number 1, just as always happened to Battisti. But making such a work go to number 1 was a sign of an impressive chemistry between the artist and the audience because it is not an easy album; it is light years away from the little songs (luxury little songs) like "7 e 40" and much closer to the experiments of the subsequent work, of which this is somehow the predecessor.
Battisti, who from here on will not write anything for anyone else, for the first time leaves Italy and goes to London, records the album at Abbey Road Studios under the supervision of John Leckie (someone who collaborated, and had already collaborated, with insignificant people like John Lennon, Syd Barrett, and Pink Floyd) and leaves a fair amount of space for Mogol's words (who's really unleashed here) but leaves ample space for music intended as guitar solos and synthesizers. In short, Battisti has always thought that music came before words, and here he fully demonstrates it, blending the two with astounding skill considering he was only 30 years old.
Side A
Okay, there's "La collina dei ciliegi," and we all know this one; moreover, the "outstretched arms" and the presumed fascism to which the two authors were allegedly inclined caused a stir, then everything was denied, and well, we know that in the '70s, you were either activists or right-wing, the third way was impossible. The side closes with the title track, which was said to have been written for his son Luca, but it has nothing to do with it; it's a critique of the Catholic Church, and the guitars sound very Everything but the Girl ten years earlier. In between, there's a one-two punch: "Ma è un canto brasileiro" is a fierce critique of advertising, consumerism, and the desire to "sell" products of all kinds beyond any reasonable doubt. Musically, it's a masterpiece of rock interweaving (there's a lot of rock in this record), mariachi choruses, xylophones, and Battistian ups and downs (his trademark, and some compared him to Puccini) capable of creating an atmosphere both joyful and decadent. Then follows the most experimental piece in the album, "La canzone della terra," which, when I was 20, said nothing to me and bored me, but I was foolish because the obsessive tribal rhythm that is the melodic line of the entire song would be a total exception in the world of Italian music of that time, since such a thing had never been heard. There's even some (semi) veiled hot twist in the text, but also the famous cover photographed by Paolo Minoli (which caused a scandal, topless, heaven forbid) is the representation of this piece, which is a deep story of a typical day of a family from the past with its immutable and arguable rites (basically, she stays home doing chores, he comes back tired from work in the evening and expects her to listen and yield to him every night).
Side B
The best, the most snubbed, even though there's a song, in my opinion, too many. "Le allettanti promesse" is hilarious because a chorus of women invites a him to leave the countryside and go live in the town, and he answers no way. Synthesizers and bass are to die for, with vocal interweavings among Battisti's most daring (stuff that in "Pensieri e parole" you understood everything straight away), so much so that at one point in the song, you either listen to what he's saying or you listen to the chorus, or you understand nothing, and it's all beautiful. On "Io gli ho detto no," forgive the pun, everything has been said. All wrong, though, because the song is mysterious, lends itself to multiple interpretations, also due to that "him," among the most fanciful hypotheses: he's bisexual (writes Renzo Stefanel, critic, "delicate story free from any moralism," suggesting "the equal dignity of every love for the author, who thus sharply contrasts the stupid and sexist prejudices of Le allettanti promesse," he didn’t understand anything); he's a conscientious objector, or heavens, it's about divorce. Mogol years later explained it was about a man who refused a job that involved a large sum of money and returned disheartened to his wife, hence the meaning of "forgetting the already forgotten color of a thousand lire." It closes with "Questo inferno rosa," a nearly 7-minute mini-suite, with a shrilling final tail, which gave feminists a start because he, after marrying her, no longer recognizes her; she's changed and no longer has the enthusiasm she once had (like, for example, showing her breasts to an annoying neighbor singing "Fratelli d'Italia," there Mogol was surely on a trip) but it's a little gem, perhaps one of Battisti's most beautiful compositions, very British (and indeed the intent was to bring Italian pop towards the Anglo-Saxon field, but you see, at that time in the UK there was an abundance and then some). I obviously do not forget "Prendi fra le mani la testa," which seems to me the weakest track on the record, moreover, it’s a recycling since it was given to the semi-nobody Riki Maiocchi in 1967, and he toured Italy at the time of Cantagiro.
Looking among the credits, the usual Gian Piero Reverberi, the legendary Gianni Dall'Aglio (the final tail of "Non è Francesca" is his intuition) and Mara Cubeddu, already in Flora Fauna Cemento (and who remembered them anymore) who will then be the double voice of "Due mondi" in "Anima latina." Indeed, everything connects.
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