Paolo Conte
Appunti di viaggio

Nestled between two monuments of absolute perfection like "Paris Milonga" and "Paolo Conte 1984," there's another masterpiece at risk of going unnoticed or at least being somewhat undervalued. It is "Appunti di viaggio (1982)," a sui generis album by the Lawyer from Asti, centered around the evocation of places with precise names, but with fantastical and indefinite outlines. Like sudden glimpses, images of Chinatown, Shanghai, Vienna, Timbuktu, Zanzibar, of an undefined dark and mysterious Africa, scented with jasmine, of a Piedmontese countryside populated by voices and "abysses of light," of a vague North of "languid mountains" come into view. There's nothing related to notes taken by a keen-eyed globetrotting tourist: these places rather seem like the daydreams of a lazy dreamer who has never left that incredible place called Mocambo. It's there that one might find the long-gone tamarind or the exotic curaçao, it's there that fatal women with magnetic charm can still be encountered, and it's especially there that the music (naturally played live) remains in the enchanting atmospheres of '30s and '40s jazz. Even assuming it existed at some point, now it's only an imaginary place, which lives exclusively in Paolo Conte's mind and thus in his great music.

More than a location, it is a state of mind, one of incurable nostalgia that, however, coexists with the healthy habit of not taking oneself too seriously, as in "Fuga all'inglese," where beneath an ironic and mocking text hide thoughts far from light-hearted (It's all a big goodbye... one day Gondrand will come, I'm telling you, with the yellow truck everything will be carried away and then nothing will be left of our world...). Or as in the amusing "Lo zio," with its bilingual, irreverent, and at the same time evocative text, which is perfectly complemented by the brisk rhythm and the numerous interventions of the devilish pseudo-instrument called "kazoo," a real passion of the Lawyer, who regularly associates it with the most humorous moments of his compositions. "Dancing" as a setting immediately calls to mind "Boogie," but here the protagonist is more at ease, the unease and the bows make of me an ape) and the rhythm is more intense (rumba). The smoky venue with musicians in the shadows, immortalized in "Boogie," is far away: here we're merely in a vulgar dance hall, indeed. "Gioco d'azzardo" is a moving tango of piazzolla-like flavor, honestly and almost cynically dealing with a romantic relationship kept too hidden, until it is now too late; "La frase" has a similar rhythm, but is more cryptic and slightly less inspired. The real gem of the album is "Hemingway," almost inevitably present in concerts. After a few strophe-flashes, whose common denominator is "beyond...", Paolo Conte leaves us with a "maybe one day I'll explain better..." and leaves it to the music to represent the immense nostalgia for Hemingway's world and time. And the music does so marvelously, with a melodic and airy finale, a future model for other beautiful crescendo finales after a few calm strophes (think of the splendid "Max," from "Aguaplano"). Another golden moment is "Diavolo rosso," which brings us into Pavese's world, in that Piedmontese countryside dreamed of through "La luna e i falò," here evoked through beautiful discrete images, including one particularly dear to me: "this darkness smells of hay and far away", or how to concentrate a set of sensations in a single line. "Nord" runs for the most part quite anonymous, but the accordions in the finale lift it significantly.

If one were to find a flaw, it could be said that with its eight tracks, it's the Lawyer's most economical album, but the quality is always the one we know, the one that makes each of his albums a work cared for like a precious piece of craftsmanship.