Mario Biondi
If

Why?

Why can't I ever finish listening to this latest album by Mario Biondi "If" (Tattica editions 2009), even though every time I promise myself to make the effort to do so. Why?

Because I keep telling myself "the voice isn't even bad: warm, soulful, deep, and vaguely black-colored" but then I listen to the music and I'm totally let down. Why?

Because as soon as I hear these riffs as old as Noah and these banal and predictable chords like a mint-flavored popsicle in August, I get a sort of depression thinking about that myriad of brilliant and unknown bands that just can't get their music out there?

Yet I heard him on Rai1 talking about "I wanted to achieve an executive perfection because I don't settle". And I was like: "wow, this guy knows what's up". And yet friends also told me "hey, have you heard Biondi's latest? It's amazing!". And I was like: "wow, then there must be something good this time". And yet it was already "platinum record" with 70 thousand preorders even before the release (November 6). And I was like: "wow, this must be the right time!".

And instead: a complete and utter disappointment.

The album is unbearable and already by the third track you feel like giving up, pressing eject on the player and putting everything back in the digipack.

Yet it was recorded between Rome and Rio de Janeiro, mastered in New York, with the precious contribution of strings recorded in London by the Telefilmonic Orchestra London (which made me exclaim again "wow, then this must be something unmissable"), and the bearded Mario Biondi wanted with him, besides the most prestigious names in the national and international music scene: from Herman Jackson (piano) to Michael Baker (drums), from Jacqués Morelenbaum (cello) to Ricardo Silveira (guitar), from Sonny Thompson (bass and guitar) also the very Italian Lorenzo Tucci (drums), Fabrizio Bosso (trumpet) to Giovanni Baglioni (guitar) and many others.

And then I ask myself again: why?

Why after the successful debut of “Handful of Soul” and the live “I Love You More” (which I listened to once and diligently returned semi-packaged to the store), this guy (who has an undeniably warm and respectable soulful voice), didn't focus more on the songwriting and instead of trying to show off with foreign musicians, chic orchestras, trips to New York and various nonsense, didn't focus more on the purely musical aspect which here is horribly old, congested and "staged", not to mention hackneyed. Basically: why play at being the "Barry White of Our Own". Why?

I could go on with more "why's" but I would become cloying and boring too. So if you want, listen to the single here. Again, there's no disputing the voice but to make a proper album, in my humble opinion, a beautiful voice is not enough. It requires originality, emotion, and magic. Things that, in varying degrees, are missing in such an album.

And I ask myself again: but why? Does anyone have the ready answer to give me?