Flavio Giurato
Il manuale del cantautore

A true cult object, Flavio Giurato appears to us today as an 'unidentified singing subject'. It is said that he had a flash of notoriety in the early 80s after the release of the excellent 'Il Tuffatore', some videos of which were broadcast on Rai within the glorious program Mister Fantasy. Then, in 1984, the album 'Marco Polo', decidedly experimental and wonderfully challenging, marked the end of his rise (also due to very tough years for music in our home country) and the beginning of oblivion. It is also rumored that he never stopped playing and composing new pieces. With the new millennium he reappears, and after a mini LP and a live performance, he returns in 2007 with a work that takes up the title and reworks the pieces (adding others) from the work five years prior: 'Il manuale del cantautore'. What can I say? In my opinion, we are facing one of the best 'singer-songwriter' albums of the decade, probably the only current work of an author of the 'second generation' (those who started publishing records towards the end of the '70s) to be of the highest level from every point of view: musical construction, interpretation, lyrics.

They are fascinating songs that you listen to and listen to again in search of an understanding that slowly reveals itself, compelling and never trivial music, melodies that become unforgettable and constant changes of rhythm. Twelve pieces that encapsulate ideas for at least thirty and stand as a cornerstone for those who today want to continue the glorious Italian tradition of singing their own words.

Of course, listen to everything: right away, standout tracks include 'Il caso Nesta', a bizarre intersection of magicians, lottery numbers, and private TV football, the splendid ride of 'Centocelle', a chronicle of an impossible escape, 'La Giulia Bianca', a poignant recollection of the times of revolt with a special dedication to Pier Paolo Pasolini, but also 'Silvia Baraldini', almost an inspired 'intimate' twist on Guccini's famous ballad, 'Praga', which recounts a youthful experience of the author who happened to personally witness (he was there with the Italian youth baseball team) the Soviet invasion of 1968, the long and mysterious 'Mi Lang' that slowly unravels a painful love story seeking an impossible serenity amidst the flashes and pursuits of paparazzi, and the concluding 'I Dinosauri', another over eight-minute ride set in Rome during the Jubilee of 2000.

 The lyrics, beautiful, manage to tell stories without being didactic, combining evocative images with raw reality and approaching the subject matter always from an oblique and original point of view,  Giurato's voice, powerful and mature, fills every single word, every repeated repetition with meanings. But what strikes the most and becomes clear only after several listenings is the particular musical construction of the pieces. Giurato manages to juxtapose different 'melodic parts' seemingly unconnected to each other that chase asymmetrically throughout the songs, giving them an elliptical and always unexpected structure. Melodies that return with variations sometimes minimal, sometimes more noticeable in the lyrics, arrangement, and interpretative vis. The most remarkable example of this technique, in my opinion, is found in 'Mi-Lang', but it is present in almost all the pieces.

In short: indisputably, for those who love the genre, five stars.