Tiromancino
Insisto

Band: TIROMANCINO
Album: "INSISTO"
Year: 1994

Tracklist:

1) Insisto
2) Quel che non si conosce
3) Quattro barche, grandi nere
4) Il mio amico misterioso (Alfredo)
5) Il prete confessore
6) Meglio dormirci su
7) Anatema
8) Mare di guai
9) Voglio
10) Nell'ipotesi di un guasto nucleare
11) Come fare
12) Specchio

Nowadays we think of Tiromancino as a poetic, sweet, dreamy, and suitably commercial pop/soft rock band that appeals elegantly to the general public, both to those who attend indie festivals like the Tora! Tora! Festival and to those who love Festivalbar, i.e., people who don't listen to an album but only the single pushed on the radio and therefore don't have well-defined musical tastes.

Yet Tiromancino, the delicate Tiromancino, spent a lot of time in the Italian underground rock scene; before the commercial boom they had with "La descrizione di un attimo," they released as many as four albums: "Tiromancino" (a deliberately hard-to-find record, described by Federico himself as one of the 5 ugliest records in human history) dated 1992, "Insisto" dated 1994, "Alone alieno" dated 1995, and "Rosa spinto" dated 1997. So, if you'll allow me, let me take a step back 12 years to review the first, for the public, and second, for the nostalgic, Tiromancino album.

Let's start by saying that to listen to this album, one should, first of all, already be a little crazy just to be able to better grasp the juice this work offers us, without too much bravado. Have you read the tracklist? Good, then you must have definitely realized there's something off, right?! As soon as I read "Nell'ipotesi di un guasto nucleare," I grabbed my bag, headed to the cashier, paid for the album found in a bargain bin, dashed home, took the stairs four at a time, opened the door, put "Insisto" in the CD player and prepared myself, just those two seconds to load it after pressing play, for something definitely different from what Tiromancino presented to us today! Oh... it was truly something different, but what am I saying?! Something way too different!

Indie psychedelic experimental pop rock, words halfway between those we might find in a Battiato text or in a poem of an opium-stoked poet, Federico sings like a madman, in the true sense of the word, with his faint and delicate yet rock voice when needed, as in this case. The tracks that struck me, like a cannonball in the stomach, are many and among them, we find "Insisto," a piece that, in addition to giving the entire work its name, also serves as the opening track: a reverse of semi-tuned guitars, surely extracted from a studio jam session, introduces a soundscape made of distorted guitars, feedback, semi-grunge drums, and synths, completely out of place but highly effective in creating a truly psychedelic atmosphere, Marlene Kuntz style, very "Festa mesta"!
The fourth track, "Il mio amico misterioso (Alfredo)," talks about the need to create an imaginary friend ("they tried to convince me that you don't exist, I killed my psychoanalysts with a hammer") to defend oneself from loneliness or to never feel contradicted ("my mysterious friend, Alfredo, hates everyone mortally, and I follow him!"), '70s style sounds, especially in the refrain, not bad!

"Anatema" is perhaps the most Tiromancino-like song of "Insisto"; the song opens with an intro of piano, acoustic guitar, and bass that really sends shivers down the spine, finally Federico's voice, strictly falsetto, manages to find its true dimension, which it struggled to find in others like "Quello che non si conosce," too intent on copying Battiato; in "Anatema" instead, everything goes smoothly so much so that the chorus will literally involve you and perhaps you'll find yourself singing it on apathetic evenings... strong the epic legendary text Branduardi style! If the ninth track, "Voglio," had been released as a single, it would almost certainly have been remembered as a hit of summer '94; catchy nonsensical pop/rock.
"Specchio" is a very strange song, Federico seems to want to impersonate Enrico Ruggeri's voice at any cost (a mockery?); the instrumental part is crazy: it starts with a handclap introducing a piano secretly accompanied by a distorted electric guitar, everything boils down to a rock mazurka from a Wine Festival and concludes with a mix of feedback, various distortions, and manipulations performed on a synth! Listen to believe!

In conclusion, I (Tiromancino) sum up... I have just mentioned the most interesting songs, the rest are not bad but chase the stereotype of an indie-rock alternative at all costs a bit too much, a genre vocally not suitable for a singer like Federico: the fact of the voice that sometimes doesn't convince me, together with the fact that the whole work seems a bit too unripe to me, are the reasons why I gave three stars to this record. It's a pity, I know, the ideas were there and were good, but unfortunately in the end, they turn out confused and some get lost in experimenting just to follow a trend!

Not bad, anyway, as a start, not bad...