1st: LAZY
After many years of hard work and a masterpiece behind him called I lupi, Ivan decides to aim even higher: he summons the best musicians of the time and skyrockets the budget for the recordings... and the result speaks for itself. Pigro is an extraordinary album, consisting of 8 tracks that managed to bring one of the first gusts of rock to the ears of all Italians, with sounds that are perfectly crafted and always original. The role of the Trojan horse goes to Monna Lisa, introduced by a mechanical and driving riff that tells the story of a man who decides to steal the Mona Lisa from the Louvre to destroy it; in this piece, all the characteristics of the artist are present, with a surreal and lively text, and a powerful rock that explodes in the chorus to the tune of Monna Lisa. After such a beginning, the album delivers its two main ballads: Sabbia del deserto, featuring a masterful brass arrangement, narrates the life of an artist who (survives) in his provincial town where he reunites with his girlfriend and relatives, who are perpetually anxious about him; the second one is Paolina, a slightly Vendittiano portrayal of the daily struggles and desires of a girl at the center of certain men's attention. Suddenly, one of the most successful pieces in the singer-songwriter's repertoire materializes in the middle of the album, introduced by a powerful and aggressive guitar riff and a hard and precise drum beat that immediately create an atmosphere of unease: this is Fango, a gruesome story of a 21-year-old who commits murder. The lyrics are disarmingly beautiful, making you feel as if you're standing in front of the young murderer, and the arrangement reaches one of the highest levels in Graziani's guitar work, giving strength and grit to the chorus and creating a sound enchantment that straddles the gruesome and the magical. Digging into the B-side, we find a very particular song, the title track Pigro: built on an apparently simple and catchy acoustic guitar progression, it narrates the narrow-minded way of thinking of certain bourgeois categories who read book after book but can’t even tell the difference between a branch and a leaf; a small and mouthwatering classic of Ivan's repertoire. After the slow folk festival in b-Milano, poking fun at the progressive groups of that time in a rock-folk style, comes another of the artist's best songs: Gabriele D'Annunzio, a title that is merely a red herring since it talks about a rude and uncivilized farmer who has little to do with the poet; the arrangement consists almost exclusively of acoustic guitar, spiced up in some passages only with flutes. Ivan’s greatness lay precisely in this: he could enchant and surprise even using simple and basic arrangements in the style of the singer-songwriter movement of the time. This small work closes with another ballad called Scappo di casa: this time it’s the piano that supports a good part...