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Rating: This album, the first to be entirely self-produced, just by Capossela with the help of skilled guitarist Alessandro “Asso” Stefana, continues a journey from a distance, yet it diverges greatly from the previous album 'Ovunque Proteggi' of biblical weight, with its shouted exploits, so much tied to physicality, to a primitive and secular contact with the earth. 'Da Solo', instead, is much more introspective, intimate, enclosed inward... like a winter blanket with chestnuts and wine!
To my great delight, the theme of the 'intangible instruments' is revisited, those to which Vinicio had already given space during church concerts, those that do not make noise like a distorted guitar but create the spirit of the songs... the Theremin by Vincenzo Vasi wailing its ghostly and lyrical voice, the cristallarmonio invented by Gianfranco Grisi, produce the magical suggestion of a Dickens Christmas carol... where you don't have to strain to hear everything, even the jingle of a falling teaspoon! To these is added 'the largest musical mammal', the mighty Wurlitzer, the imposing organ that was used to accompany silent films. There are Pascal Comelade's toy instruments highlighting that dimension of innocence and genuineness introduced in the album already by the first song, the "Gigante e il Mago", and that ends in the purity of the sky of the last track, "Non C’è Disaccordo nel Cielo". In short, a finely inlaid carpet where voice and piano dominate everything.
A voice that knows how to move... in the midst, innocence is consumed with life, it becomes dusted and dirty. The naked voice conveys the chiaroscuro, "In Clandestinità", sings of 'joy with short legs'… “Like a bird on the cage I tried to be free”. It narrates the human tragicomedy of “Paradiso Dei Calzini” in which we are a bit like those mismatched socks mixed in with the laundry, unable to find the other half “those who fell to the bottom, those who never found their return, those who stubbornly pursued a patch”. The metaphors continue in the brilliant and amusing register where even the music, gently paced like a music box, seems to parody a funny, ruthlessly true drama “those who abused Napisan or Cloritina, those who got ruined with bleach”. “Una Giornata Perfetta” proceeds at a tap dance pace, infused with the goodwill and carefree spirit of a musical. "Parla Piano" and "Orfani Ora"... stories of ended love where pain and sorrow are lost... because time has intervened, because crying has turned into a hymn, because as it says in "Sante Natale" “the rain has turned to snow and does not hurt but wets, and like soft manna it consoles us”. The voice remains hazy and soft at the same time and alone. The sound blend is perceivable enchantment, you have to discover it behind, but it’s there and it is infinitely beautiful.
And then you find yourself "Dall’altra Parte della Sera", in the wide spaces and silences of the American territory, where the legend of the West has shriveled on itself and everything feels a bit abandoned, like objects in "Vetri Appannati d’America" “the pumps remain like standing tombstones along the motionless miles” and the people who inhabit it “What has life done to your face in the... silence of America”. In this part of the album, the winds, the brass, reign over the desolation of flags in the wind and Salvation Army fanfares. However, the texts are simple and hit the mark immediately in “Lettere di Soldati” “you did not know who you hit, a cross in the nebulized glass, it wasn't a soldier... it wasn't a soldier, small and armed”. That repetition 'it wasn't a soldier', with the necessary pauses, is chilling! Capossela's narrativity is always his own, sharp and exceptional… he is inspired by 'Winesburg, Ohio' by Sherwood Anderson to depict for us, like drawings framed by each verse, the characters in procession from those rural, dusty, and distant places, aided in the evocation by the Tex-Mex of Calexico playing in "La Faccia Della Terra" “The reverend and his buggy and his salary and his haughty wife, he prayed to his Lord to give him the fire, to inflame his sermon from the pulpit”.
And I listened to 'Da Solo', alone, for the first time in my little room, without pre-listening, unwrapped and listened to (as I used to do) towards evening with the lights from the cars projecting the outlines of tree branches and leaf shadows on the wall as they entered through the window.
“the walls speak for themselves, one does not re-do life the same”
Tracklist and Videos
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Other reviews
By MeddleForRock
It’s an album with calm and dreamy atmospheres, which takes us back to the times of Canzoni a manovella.
After all, it’s very difficult to review a Vinicio’s album.
By cabernet
It’s such a wonderfully winter album, to be listened to by a lit fireplace, curled up on the couch peeling chestnuts with a glass of wine at hand.
And in the end that’s how it is, when you search through memories after mixing them with time, tears dry up and everything simplifies, falling asleep peacefully in memory...
By maddalena
'This is a mediocre disc, unworthy of the Capossela name.'
'The songs lack that precise, sharp melody that in past works managed to penetrate your brain and heart.'
By primiballi
"He is a luxury craftsman, very talented, a splendid manipulator of words, with a sense of both the ditty and the ballad."
"Here, our man takes his dog for a spin around the barnyard, as good as always, as capable as ever, as recognizable as ever, but without stirring anything particular."
