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Rating: I understand marketing.
I understand the tricks of restyling & new looks and the hunt for new, increasingly distracted listeners.
I understand certain logics between record labels and publishing houses.
I understand everything, but this operation of "dressing up" old songs by PGR by Franco Battiato, our Guru Singer-Songwriter, who is now on the decline, I just don't understand it.
Artistically speaking, I mean.
The 9 old songs on this album "ConFusione", taken from the three albums of the group led by Ferretti & C. (just over half an hour of music!!) are indeed "lightened" and more graceful, with barely hinted symphonic touches, some slight touch of piano, a touch of classical guitar, and other "small niceties" but the result, beyond everything, has very little substance. And even less coherence.
What sense does it make to change the roughness of certain dark and leaden arrangements (I'm thinking of the track "Ah, Le Monde!" which I much prefer in its original debut album version arranged by the Ei Fu Hector Zazou) to barely modify them?
The recitative and severe voice of Lindo Ferretti doesn't really match with the violins and light orchestrations typical of our Francone's latest classical production.
Was Battiato needed for this frankly useless compilation that adds little to the beauty of the original songs?
Wouldn't it have been better to produce the songs as they were originally conceived by the band?
The fact that the CD was released attached to the June issue of XL by the La Repubblica group makes me suspect that, in the end, this is nothing but a big commercial operation involving more PR and Press Offices than Music and Musicians (read the somewhat analogous case of the LitFurbi Pelù/Renzulli).
In short: a work we could have easily done without, Franco, Giovanni, and everyone.
Except that there is a small difference: at the end of it all, in Franco and Giovanni's pockets, there will remain a few euros directly taken from our pockets or from those who will be lured by the name Battiato, loudly proclaimed on the cover, like a hunter's whistle when hunting for larks.
In short: nice work but... dispensable.
Tracklist
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