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Rating: Marco Paolini introduces us, in two lines of presentation, to the birth of this Album for a concert dedicated to water as a resource, where the versatile actor-director and now also musical performer was to present a series of songs-poems to remind the present audience that, "one: all species and ecosystems have the right to their share of water on this planet; two: there is a liquid thread that binds us humans to each other and links us to other species, it's called a cycle and it shouldn’t be broken, tangled...; third: water is free; and fourth... and fifth... and tenth" reason why water should be a right for everyone and should not be taken away from rich and poor countries. This is how water is used in this work, as a symbol of all those fundamental rights that we, countries that are part of the G7, or G8, or whatever, deny the other 5 billion inhabitants of this world and the other millions of species that live in scarcity even of naturally vital resources.
And it is a folk trio born and lived under the star of the Faber, Mercanti Di Liquore, that accompanies the poems, the nursery rhymes of some great Italian authors, or the acts of accusation that Paolini becomes responsible for from time to time, with melodies of immediate simplicity and beauty.
What to say about the album... well, that compared to the concert, Mercanti withdraw from that role of accompaniment that they still maintain live, and we hear the continuous alternation of Paolini's musical monologues, with the ballads sung by the fantastic deep De André-esque voice of Lorenzo Monguzzi (but more often the former interprets the characters of the stories told and the latter serves as a narrator).
In addition, beyond the central and original theme of water that runs transversely through the album, starting from "Due Parti Di Idrogeno Per Una Di Ossigeno" - in which Paolini freely (?) interprets a passage taken from Joyce's Ulysses - up to the last poem by Erri De Luca, which also gives the album its name, "Sputi", passing through the wonderful "Mare Adriatico", where one of the many nursery rhymes taken from Gianni Rodari ironically critiques the habit of buying anything, up to the paradox of wanting to buy a sea, and for "Regola Acquea" from the union of a poem by Biagio Marin and a memo written by Paolini himself, which on the album loses some of its verve... sorry I digressed too much... resuming, I was saying that beyond the central theme of water, various topics are addressed from time to time with fascinating lightness, as if it were all a game, varied subjects: from the vice of the powerful (any reference to characters of our times is purely coincidental) of seeking and finding an enemy to "play" at making war ("Re Federico"), to the struggle between different masters that still leaves the common people very poor ("L'Altissimo"), up to our own tangentopoli (the character that Paolini interprets in the song very much resembles our president) ("Domani È Lunedì"), and yet the beautiful ballad for the Cervi brothers ("Sette Fratelli").
In short, certainly amidst the invasion of committed folk albums that have recently been flooding store shelves, this is one of the most interesting, for the beautiful texts, the always excellent music, and the intriguing fusion between theatrical performance and Italian folk music.
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