Vinicio Capossela
Canzoni a manovella

THE REVIEW

Vinicio Capossela - Canzoni a manovella. I have been living in Italy for five years now, and this is the most original album I have ever heard. It is a work completely estranged from the concept of music, in many ways it reminds me very much of theater. A very visual music. The strong point of this album is the atmosphere it creates. Personally, I immediately found it very unsettling, it feels like being immersed in an imaginary world, a cross between the Italy of the '50s, a saloon with a piano from an Italian Far West, and Pinocchio's land of toys, a world where imagination has no limits, where good and evil are relative to another dimension, and where man feels like a child again, discovering his new environment with wonder.

Canzoni a manovella will not be my favorite album, but it is one of those that has shaken me the most, so different from all the others I have heard before that it disorients and arouses distrust: at first, I didn’t know whether to applaud or detest it. That is what is incredible, through this album I discovered another completely different, decadent world, whose existence I could not have imagined in Italy in 2005, it is what arouses fear and emotion, the existence of another form of life, another way of thinking, another way of seeing things. At first glance, it may seem like an anachronism, yet it is a decadence wonderfully embedded in our culture.

A truly original music: both for the instruments used that recall peasant festivals and town bands of the '50s (accordion, "music machines", etc...), and for the lyrics written in a shamelessly decadent style but with a certain contemporaneity. Vinicio's voice and the "quirky" figure of his persona harmonize wonderfully with his music. They are one and the same. This album certainly will not please those who do not want to be shaken and disturbed in their certainties, but it will drive everyone else crazy.