Mario Venuti
Magneti

It's nice to know that there are still songs capable of evoking emotions and sensations without needing to overdo it; it's nice when just a few notes and thoughtful words are enough to make you feel like you're in a different place, maybe not far from where you are, but still different.

Mario Venuti, with this latest work "Magneti", succeeds in this endeavor; the lyrics of the songs are polished just enough, never pretentious, the melodies are simple but not obvious. Of course, it's still an honest pop album, but it's authorial pop, the kind that's increasingly rare in today's Italian scene.
The work opens with "È stato un attimo", a track frequently played on the radio these days, one of those few tracks that, even though it's catchy, doesn't tire you after 3 listens. This is precisely the fundamental characteristic of this work: the tracks have a great freshness yet also a great quality, making it possible to listen without commitment but at the same time not be trivial.

Both the lyrics and the music surprise with each listen; all themes are treated with great style and especially with knowledge, something very rare today. The other singles from the album are "Qualcosa brucia ancora" and the Sanremo song "Un altro posto nel mondo", the first with simple and direct lyrics but maintaining, as usual, a great class, the second is one of the few gems gifted by the festival in recent years.
But all the other tracks of the album are also noteworthy and deserve more than one listen as they are characterized by a great evocative power; with "Anni selvaggi", "Santa Maria la Guardia" and "Sulu" you feel instantly transported to Sicily, the homeland of Mario Venuti, to which the singer-songwriter is strongly tied. "Addio alle armi", "Malintesi" and "Magneti" are still pieces of great class yet at the same time pleasant and fun along the lines of the already extracted singles, and in "Il mondo in bianco e nero", the evocative power of the Sicilian singer-songwriter extends to time as well as space.

It is nevertheless the closing track "Open Space" that offers the most pleasant surprise, with original lyrics where architecture and existentialism fuse always in an original and non-pedantic way and with unpredictable music. It's a pity that Mario Venuti is still very underrated as an artist, while Italian music today might need more artists like him: artists who don't just copy themselves (Ligabue, Tiromancino), artists who don't strive to make sophisticated music at the cost of its naturalness and spontaneity (Consoli, Marlene Kuntz).

Music would need more and more authentic artists and Mario Venuti is one of them.