Marco Notari
Oltre Lo Specchio

THE REVIEW

Marco Notari was born in Turin in 1979 and approached music from a young age (a classic). In 2003, he participated in the Tora! Tora! Festival and other music events together with the Madame, his band at the time. In 2006, he revisited, but perhaps it would have been better if he hadn't, "Un Bacio Falso" by Garbo in a rock version for the compilation "ConGarbo" and in the same year released "Oltre Lo Specchio", an album halfway between Afterhours-inspired alternative rock and more radio-friendly classic rock... an album I rediscovered but under certain aspects didn't move me that much, quite the opposite.

The rock proposed by Marco Notari is a songwriter's rock, almost cantautorial, almost '90s, where the music is pleasant to listen to but remains firmly on its tracks without deviating too much. Among the few tracks that timidly "get noticed" (notare-Notari-notare-Notari, eh eh eh, too funny, I'm ready for Zelig...) we find "Speciale", a rock love song with grunge shades, no offense to those who propose true grunge, that can be listened to calmly, "Lacrime", another rock love song that's a bit more radio-friendly, which can also be listened to calmly but is somewhat lacking in its lyrics, and "Lamente D'Inverno", perhaps the most emotional track but already heard and already proposed by another 1000 Italian rock bands, a slow ballad immersed in poetic phrases and in some cases quite predictable ["...take me where everything is simpler, where ebony flowers grow..."]; as for the rest, I can say that the album turns out to be repetitive and in the long run even boring. "Vertigini" for example could have been a good track if developed more originally and imaginatively, "Noia Sacrificale" lives up to its title and the pseudo brit-pop in "Automa" doesn't take off at all. It's a pity because Marco's voice works and live, according to many, the new and old tracks ("Babele", his latest work was released this year) shine and convince much more than the recorded ones.

It's strange that such a neutral album with so few truly valuable episodes was distributed by the legendary and now lamented Mescal. My rating is 2 even though my kindness would push me to give it a 3 at least for the effort, however, since I can't always be so generous as a reviewer, this time it went this way. After all, you can't just review good albums, but also bad ones (I haven't been too harsh yet) and mediocre ones (like in this case).

I'm going to listen to "Babele" to see if in the meantime something has changed...

www.marconotari.it

www.myspace.com/marconotari