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Rating: It's been a while since I've received an album that could awaken my dormant synapses.
In the early days of December, my new postman, they've been changing often lately, delivers my usual dose of music to blast straight into my ears.
I open the package; the cover doesn't particularly attract me; I find it a bit demodé, somewhat out of the quality to which the current designers and even those of the same label have accustomed me.
I scrutinize the notes attached to the album and find something familiar: the bassist "from the best period of Il Parto delle Nuvole Pesanti" Mimmo Crudo leaves the band and releases a new album with a side project, Ondanomala.
I was an admirer of what is considered the best period of the Calabro-Bolognese band, which started in the '90s with an originally genuine punk-folk-rock and then drifted into a glossy and at times cloying ethno-authorial sideline (as they defined it themselves).
Mimmo Crudo, with the talented Lady U (Francesca Salerno), manages to put together an album that could well be the follow-up to albums like "4 Battute di Povertà" and "Sulle ali della mosca."
"Tu ci sei" is the title track of the album but it is also the "statement of intent," a door that opens, an opportunity not to be missed. The balance of sounds teetering between Mediterranean and new wave is powerful in tracks like "Salvami" and "Salta Anita. Salta!" (a track that also tells a story of redemption, a woman becoming a court witness and deciding to "jump" to the other side... and say no).
The album progresses in segments, perhaps a bit too "compartmentalized," the 3rd block recalls and blends the "partista" sounds with those of the '80s from the previous youthful production of Crudo & Lady U; tracks like "Cori Umani" and "Stringimi," although perfect and appreciable, appear somewhat distant from the global composition of the entire album.
Interesting is the "cover" of 'Le cose che mi restano,' a track borrowed from the "nuvole pesanti" collection that "Ondanomala" manages to elevate, thanks especially to the voice and interpretation of Francesca Salerno aka Lady U.
"Acikof Song" and "Acikof Dance" are the most successful tracks of "Ondanomala's" work, a perfect and balanced fusion of Mediterranean rock with a new-wave flavor, enriched with ethno-folk gems and precious electroacoustic incursions with strings, percussion, vintage synthesizers, and sharp electric guitars.
Migration is the foundational theme of the "Acikof" episode; that of our seas ruffled by injustices, inability, trampled dignity, and shattered lives.
The album's closure is entrusted to a sweet and, in its way, "lullaby-esque" track (allow me the term); perhaps a subconscious tribute and farewell to the companion of composition, music, and life Checco Salerno, an important driver of the entire project, whom the mystical law has transitioned to another life.
"Tu ci sei" is an interesting album, a dive into the past but with feet in the present, a little backward journey in the DeLorean of Mimmo Crudo and Lady U. An album full of delightful and skillfully sprinkled 'retro-futurism.' An album not to be missed for lovers of the genre and not only by them, an album to listen to to enter the "acikof" world of Ondanomala, a quick, dense, and loaded album but at the same time light, that kind of lightness found in Calvino's writings that lets you glide over things from above and doesn't weigh down your heart.
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