Roberto Vecchioni
Io non appartengo più

LA RECENSIONE

Hello everyone, I am Carlo V. and this is the first review I write for DeBaser.

The new album of original songs by Vecchioni, an author much loved and debated on this site, of which I've read many interesting reviews written by some of the users I enjoy reading the most. Here, I share a couple of my reflections, trying to be as original as possible.

1) This album is released at a difficult time for songwriting and, in general, for music. The 'Prof.' bears the responsibility of putting music where Gaber, Dalla, Faber, Jannacci, and many others can no longer. For one reason or another, things are such: a good record hasn't been released for too long. It's impossible, therefore, not to draw comparisons with the 'testament' of 'colleague' Guccini who, last year, with 'L'Ultima Thule' gave us an exit that was frankly far from classy. He was tired, reduced to very few opportunities to be original and enjoyable, for over a decade now, and this album, to me, seemed like the product of a period of estrangement from the musical world, from the felt effort to maintain a certain standard. For this reason, Guccini's testament could seem like that of Italian songwriting; however, perhaps it's not so, Vecchioni in fact, the following year, with 'Io non appartengo più', gives us an album far above what I expected.

2) Comparing the songs doesn't seem appropriate to me; there are songs that succeed more and some less, but since it’s a Vecchioni record, it’s inevitable that, beyond musical technique and metric scheme, there is the song that hits us at heart, which we feel is more ours, and which we love to love. So, I limit myself to essential reflections: 'Sei nel mio cuore' is a 'little song', but this isn’t a flaw, it’s the quirk of someone who knows they have to perhaps give a moment of pause and diversion, in an album that deals with particular topics and isn’t the easiest to listen to, and then it has a fantastic bass line and, as much as it can be a 'little song', let’s also say it quotes Quasimodo. 'Due madri' seems to me a truly useless piece, a flop, and a pretext to make the Prof. seem a bit of a show-off. Fairly happy episodes are 'Sui ricordi' (not the height of originality, but good word choice), 'Stelle' (a song to which I’ll return in closing) and what seems to me the best track of the album, which would deserve a review of its own, and which I hope will be discussed in the comments that I’d love to read: 'Io non appartengo più'. Now, I’m not going to write why I consider it the best song, since each song speaks to each of us in different ways, making words react to our senses, memories and experiences; sincerely, it seems to me the most desired track, the truly indispensable one, that adds, even after so many years of career, another facet to the profile (personal, up to a certain point) of this great artist.

3) A curious thing that I like to point out is the parallelism between 'Stelle' and 'Velasquez' from 'Elisir', released in 1975 I believe. Thus returns the theme of travel after forty years, of records, of narrative and concerts. I always greatly enjoy noticing these 'red threads' that link one song to another, sometimes one album to another, and in very rare episodes, even moments so distant in time. Indeed, one of the few things that excited me listening to 'L'Ultima Thule', was precisely the title-track, a song that, in a certain sense, we had already listened to thirty years earlier, in the album 'Guccini', where we found the track 'Gulliver'. And, curiously, once again it's the journey that offers the chance to return to a theme already addressed and perhaps so loved.

The entire review, even any blunders, is all my own doing. I hope I haven’t bored you and I thank you for reading my review.
Until next time! 

-Carlo V.-