Paolo Conte
Un gelato al limon

THE REVIEW

Great pianist, great author, great creator of atmospheres: this is, and perhaps more, the Astigiano Paolo Conte. It's hard not to love him, impossible to speak ill of him.

Before the great success (and rightful triumph) of "Paris Milonga," in the blessed year of 1979, Conte recorded "Un gelato al limon," an ethereal, sensual, almost metaphysical album. Sounds and atmospheres from another era: while Italy is ablaze (the Br) and Bettino Craxi is preparing to reign over Italy for almost a decade, Conte narrates stories, loves, and lives from the mid-Forties. Women, whisky, prostitutes, gangsters, theater, cinema, and a slightly more modern touch, Bartali, the emblem of an Italy shaken by war and perhaps ready for a slightly better future. How are atmospheres built? Simple, with memory. Conte remembers, narrates, then performs. Through the clear memory of a childhood, an adolescence, a love, Conte dispenses with the classic instruments so dear to our bel canto (guitar, violins, drums) with one exception: the piano, using ancient and evocative instruments: marimba, honky tonk, kazoo, bass, clarinet, bass clarinet, flugelhorn, violas, cellos, accordions.

Superb stories of mischievous tangos, romantic showers at public baths, sensual balconies, vicious and haughty women. The tracks, needless to say, are magnificent: "Bartali" is the track that redeems, and restarts, a career (albeit glorious and enviable) and tells wonderfully, without frills or flirtations, the vices and virtues of an Italy that sees, somewhat blindly, in sports, and in cycling, the redemption of an entire life ("O how much road in my sandals, how much Bartali must have traveled") and then concludes patriotically ("With the French getting angry, and newspapers flying"); also worth delving into is "Gelato al limon" a dizzying, almost symphonic work that tells of journeys, mirages, illusions, hopes, and love ("Woman entering my life, with a suitcase of perplexities, ah do not fear that it's already over, there are still many things this man will give you") in which Conte's brilliant pianistic musicality seems to want to elevate to the seventh heaven an already beautiful track. Between tenderness and melancholy, "Un gelato al limon" unfolds through memory and fantasy: an exceptional album, a high-class experiment, a monument dedicated to memory and freedom, legitimate and exemplary, to fantasize without limits or boundaries.

An almost Olympic album, perhaps a bit weary towards the end ("Uomo camion" is clearly inferior to the rest of the record) but which seems not to want to, and not to be able to, go out of fashion despite the passing years.