Marco Parente
Neve Ridens

I rarely take a look at Italian music: partly because I'm a bit of a snob, I admit, partly out of laziness, partly because the singing is almost always predictable even in high-level peaks (Lindo Ferretti, however, deserves a separate discussion) and partly because of the habit of mimicking their anglophone colleagues a few months or years later who generally always "dare" something a bit more.
This "Neve Ridens" is one of those rare cases where my ears lingered with renewed attention and marked curiosity on the 8 "irregular and transversal" compositions, the result of that not exactly linear mind of Marco Parente. Finally, I hear something interesting, relatively new sounds for the Italian scene and non-canonical arrangements from "music craftsmen."

A profoundly NON-Italian album (in the sense of the term "Italiot") that seems to have come out of a session of the latest Radiohead (listen to "Wake Up") or from some old track by David Sylvian (the crepuscular "Amore o governo" or "Io aereoporto"), with low-fi influences ("Un tempio"), never banal, never predictable, light-years away from the jovanottian, maxpezzalian, or luciodallesque productions of our troubled peninsula.
If a criticism must be made, in my view (and a criticism "always makes democracy"...), it might be found in the voice that suffers a bit from hypo-intensity, that is, excessively fragile with off-pitch notes, here and there especially on high and borderline tones (the intense "Colpo di specchio") that, although they color the interpretation, never fully allow the expressive strength of the words to be rendered, turning excessively against and involuting the track and the meaning of the lyrics on sandcastles that crumble on the second or third listen. Perhaps, though, my criticism is excessive, and I should probably solely praise the courage of this Italian singer-songwriter (!?) who, in times like these, has the audacity to come out with an album that is everything but non-commercial, everything but non-trivial, managing (I imagine with a thousand difficulties) to carry forward a delicate and difficult discourse like his, without lyrics with perfect rhymes, without easily catchy choruses, and without "MTV tracks" that are so beloved by youngsters and that help sell quite a lot. It's easy to criticize, damn me, let the aforementioned try to even graze the artistic level of our subject: they wouldn't even know where to start!
To people like Marco, I bow and tip my hat: almost a masterpiece!