4th: TRAVELS AND BAD WEATHER
When an artist realizes that at that moment they have written a beautiful handful of masterpieces, the first thing that comes to mind is to try to replicate the formula of those works, and by doing so, the final product will inevitably be decidedly inferior to the aforementioned masterpieces. Ivan, on the other hand, partially changed the formula, softening the guitar's role and focusing everything on refined ballads and well-constructed boogies. This is Travels and Bad Weather, an excellent album that diverges from its three predecessors: inside, we can find songs arranged and written masterfully like Siracusa, where we also encounter interesting changes in tempo, Isabella sul treno, an exhilarating story of a meeting on a train set to the rhythm of a frenzied boogie, and so on. There are also ballads worthy of the best Ivan, like Firenze, which is undoubtedly one of the most original lyrics ever written by Ivan, and Olanda, which, perhaps compared to Firenze, is less inspired but still carries a sense of transport. In all this, Ivan certainly hasn't thrown away his wild virtuosity, and here emerges the monumental Tutto questo cosa c'entra con il rock and roll and the wonderful Dada, a decidedly challenging piece that tackles many hot topics such as homosexuality and drug use among the youth. In this quartet of masterpieces, however, Radio Londra pops up with a not-too-inspired lyric but with remarkable arrangement, and Angelina, which adds little to the rest of the album in terms of both lyrics and arrangement. Despite these two small shortcomings, Travels and Bad Weather is an album that sounds wonderfully well-played to perfection. Perhaps the inspiration isn’t quite that of I lupi, and the arrangements have lost some of the hardness seen previously, yet it remains one of Ivan's best albums.

The gem: Dada