I Pooh
Uomini Soli

Let's start with the b-side (more or less conventional, depending on whether you consider the mini-CD edition or the 7" vinyl one) of the announced first San Remo debut, as well as a new commercial best-seller (the album and the eponymous single released simultaneously are already at the top of the charts).

This year's edition of the San Remo Festival, also highlighted by the participation of Domenica Bertè, aka Mia Martini, with one of her finest recent songs ("La Nevicata del '56"), was marked by the re-introduction of the orchestra, as well as the peculiarity of the participation of a band, the Poohs, who at the peak of commercial success, with victory almost taken for granted, decided to do without the orchestral accompaniment (the only case in the entire Festival).

Returning to the first track in question, it is the only instrumental composition of the long repertoire of the band Facchinetti, Battaglia, Canzian, D'Orazio. Significantly titled "Concerto per un'Oasi" it acts as a bridge between the most recent pop-rock of the album "Oasi" and this new studio work, the track was included in the limited edition collection "Un altro... Pensiero", which featured singles in reverse chronological order (from the aforementioned instrumental overture of 1989 to "Pensiero", year 1969). It is special because it acts as a perfect counterbalance (and studied) to the song that all fans know and will purchase, as for the first time there are none of the four voices, and for the symphonic arrangement: a syncopated crescendo in the opening, with the awaited explosion of the track in percussion and keyboards, purposely sounds like an anthem, and seems (vaguely) to recall the distant memory of the fleeting prog period, as well as Italian pop with the Japanese Hi-Tech production of "Asia Non Asia" (the mood is quite similar).

Moving to the a-side, the song titled "Uomini Soli" contains two rather eccentric elements: the first refers back to what was said before, namely a song written by a group that made extensive use of strings, timpani, brass, and (even) in one case tubular bells, and which sounds without such background music, the second is the (in its own way) disorienting character of the song. What exactly is "Uomini Soli"? a piece for acoustic guitar-keyboards and voice (plus xylophones marking the dramatic passages)? Without percussion? Without the usual choirs? Without a trace of rock sounds? For the writer, at the time of the group's performance (preview of the song on single) it was an overwhelming emotion: difficult to peel away from the screen, which displayed a formation aligned in a single row, waiting to understand what kind of song it was, difficult for the writer now not to admit that at the end the sense of liberation from a strong pathos was only equal to the surprise of such an unpredictable yet moving song...
How not to be struck by the almost blasphemous invocation placed at the climax of the chorus, not to feel something that was already inside me, and that this song, so unconventional, so unaligned with the "Italian song" manages to, (as Red Canzian stated shortly after the performance) "bring out"?

My hypothesis is that "Uomini Soli" was written (and chosen) specifically with the awareness of dividing the critics and uniting the audience in a unanimous, huge applause (even commercially). A tough track, even in a semi-acoustic musical form, in content, sometimes racy (staging the infinite conflictual knots in the relationship with the opposite sex in such dramatic and almost accusatory terms is not exactly usual for the San Remo Festival, nor are words like "maybe you are there, and you have no problems" referring to the Almighty). Being able to overcome the tranquility of stellar consensus and with the prospect of a further increase in sales allows me to say that proposing a track so atypical and unclassifiable (comparisons could be "Teorema" by Marco Ferradini or "Portatemi Dio" by Vasco Rossi...) is almost definable as a courageous act. A song in which (allow me the definition) there is more "rock" (as it is traditionally understood: existential anger, expressive urgency, etc.) in this strange song than in many invectives in traditional two-distol guitar, bass, drums, subwoofer setups, and aggression/provocative attitude.

At the same time the goal is achieved: in its unique character, sparse and essential, this manages to be a perfect Pop song: that is, it succeeds in uniting the audience more than dividing the critics, because it speaks to everyone, because most viewers identify with it, and because it has a great, and courageously asserted, foundation of truth. Which is far more direct and immediate on a communicative level than many cultured and scholarly poetic verses that assert the same truths (albeit uncomfortable) in a subtly allusive, transversal way or through infinite and (not always accessible to most) literary metaphors.

Four stars for the two tracks, minus one for the rest (CD VERSION)...