Massimo Di Via
Le Rondini

It happens that for thirty years you follow the course of your destiny and after so much wandering, almost like the Dervish Turners, you stop, not even of your own fault, and you find yourself back where you started, probably with some extra wrinkles, a few extra pounds, but with a soul still intact and open to true emotions.

What happened is that after thirty years I strongly desired to meet an old friend, one with whom I had often shared days and thoughts, and who today among his many existential diversifications has found the time and way to record two CDs; I know a third is in the works but it will still be a long gestation; in this place I will deal with the second, very valid, "Le Rondini" released in 2010.

Listening to this work, if I take care to eliminate all the affectionate components that surface at every moment during the listening, I am a bit baffled by the intentions and the realization. Massimo's voice is wonderful, I didn't remember it being so round and full of nuances, but the years pass for him too and so does the accumulated experience; you can tell he took the best opportunities to learn and improve himself. Even the lyrics are often very beautiful, sometimes they glance at Panella, as in the magnificent "Lo Sguardo Perduto", but they are never too hermetic, maybe just a little cryptic because deciphering is also the prerogative of the listener and not just the composer, a bit like looking at a sparse frame and building your own film on top of it.

There are truly intense moments like in "Brest" which, paying homage to Walt Whitman, highlight all the difficulties of navigating, never giving up, in the perilous whirlpools of an uncertain existence "...O my captain if it's really over why do you let the sail still be filled with life..." or in "Ubaldo Fiori Pilota, 26 aprile 1943" where the last stanza reveals the mystery of the identity of the romantic dreamer so far from his beloved and always attentive to avoid enemy planes to bring home, if possible, his skin "...I saw continents slide and horizons tilt, I made sudden furrows of pain in the evening...".
He really brought home his skin because Ubaldo Fiori really existed and later became a pilot for Alitalia as in those happy endings that do not necessarily imply a good film, but that we particularly appreciate in our daily lives where celluloid is just a very distant pleasant substrate.

The CD flows apparently tranquil and through other excellent tracks like the introspective "Goodbye mr. Hyde", "Il Pensiero", "Chi Parlerà di Noi", "Controvento", but I could list many because generally there are no weak points, you arrive at what is perhaps the best of all: "La Memoria dell'Assente" where in the lyrics, which at a quick glance seem to allude to a love song, it is quietly acknowledged that human memory fades over time without ever indelibly focusing on the teachings of history; among Harrison, Andersen, and Dylan Massimo warns us: "...and all the people's pains were for nothing, they are like water in the hands...but my love has gone away and left me with nothing, not even a scrap of an idea to defend with teeth...".

There are notable interventions with the flute, magnificent in "Brest", the sax, and the harmonica, all instruments that Massimo Di Via has carried in his baggage for a lifetime.

At the beginning of these comments of mine, I said however that I was caught off guard by the realization of the work because, but this is a personal taste, the arrangements are excessively pop for ideas of this caliber and clash a bit with everything else. I'm not saying they aren't good, on the contrary, but in my opinion, unsuitable in this specific case: the pieces flow one after another apparently united mainly by this guiding thread and the CD slips away in the player too easily, too uniformly to make even those who listen distractedly, maybe in the background, jump in their seat. Personally, I also don't love the "programming" of instruments and even less a drum that doesn't have an impact because it's not a real drum. Personally, I would have made the tracks much rougher, more thrown away and more easily diagnosable, but to do all this you need a solid rock band that takes care of musically reproducing the sea of ideas contained in the CD.