Giorgio Poi - Songs that stare hard

Yes. When something explodes, it releases energy. And energy is almost never just destructive: it also builds something. Even out of the most complicated situations, something sensible, good, and even beautiful can emerge. I chose to let things explode. When you try to hold every thread together and then realize something is slipping away from you, yes, there's pain, there's sorrow... but a certain calm also sets in. You realize that, at a certain point, life takes its course and you can't control everything anymore, and that's okay too.

I really think so. During this period so many things around me changed that I went through a kind of small identity crisis. Writing about it was a personal journey. I didn't think of the music as a product, but as a daily search. Incidentally, right around that time, two years ago, I started seeing a psychologist for the first time. I'd never spoken to one before, and it turned out to be an experience I found really interesting and useful. It helped me above all to understand myself better, to dig inside myself. Even during those conversations I discovered a lot of things that later found their way into my songs: digging deep, profound truths emerge, even through recounting dreams. Interpreting your own psyche can be a valuable tool for expressing yourself and for truly opening up.

Grammars of the body

Even though, as I was saying, my personal experience is, I wouldn't say overbearing, but certainly central to this record, I tried to find an expressive way to process those experiences, to tell the emotional residue they left behind. What came out of it was a story, a story that's never quite spelled out, not so much about the facts themselves as about their consequences inside me. I tried to express them, and at the same time to get to know them, through writing. Without over-rationalizing, but letting the images that came to mind surface and letting them speak.

It's always come naturally to me to focus on details to tell a story. I spontaneously find myself starting from small particulars. On this record, even more than usual, there's an almost cinematic element, but one made up of close shots, of close-ups.

Yes, the fragments come back together. It's as if, after scattering, they find each other again. They used to be a single whole, then they exploded, each going its own way, but now they come together again to form a single picture.

I like that this aspect comes through. It really does reflect the fact that, over these years, my relationship with my own body, and with other people's bodies too, has evolved. It's as if, for many years, I lived mostly inside my head, almost forgetting that bodies existed at all. At a certain point, though, the presence of bodies became a new and powerful reality: mine, other people's, the bodies of those I love. Bodies that can be strong or fragile, beautiful, accepted or rejected. Bodies that simply exist.

There's light even “in the most stubborn darkness”

Hardly just one! Over the course of a life there will probably be several... starting in childhood. Crises punctuate our existences, and the urge to tell them is a deeply human one. Even though I've never presumed to speak on behalf of others or for more than myself, I also wanted to share the positive side of a moment of transition. For example, when in “Tutta la terra finisce in mare” I sing “Ma una luce si accenderà/ Nel buio più cocciuto”, what I mean is that even when the darkness sometimes seems irreparable, in the end there will still be a way to understand, to see, to look beyond it.

Melancholy isn't necessarily an unpleasant feeling. It's not sadness, it's not depression. Maybe it's not true darkness, either — that can be truly unbearable. And I don't think I've ever really experienced it. But I imagine it, and it's something that scares me. If I had lived through real darkness, I wouldn't have written an album, I wouldn't have been able to invent it. If you can create something, it means you have a spark of enthusiasm inside you. That you can sit calmly in the dark, knowing it will end, knowing that colours exist in opposition, a light, a lightness that will make the difference.

Rome, morning, exterior day

Yes, I listened to Trovajoli, or the Morricone of “C'era una volta in America”, while I was writing. And then a lot of Francis Lai too, the soundtrack to "Bilitis". There's also definitely a classical element, both because you find it in soundtracks, and because I was directly influenced by it. I listened to Wagner, Bach, Rachmaninov, and they've probably left their mark too, becoming part of that process of emotional elaboration I was telling you about.

Sure, absolutely. It's a world that fascinates me a lot. It's probably the result of the listening I've done over the years. I've listened to a lot of soundtracks and I started experiencing music as a kind of soundtrack to the world around me. Which has gone back to being Rome. Walking through the city, often in the morning, with music in my ears, it seemed like everything was transformed: the streets and the people around me became part of a scene. It was as if the music accompanied those moments and amplified their meaning.

By the time I get to Phoenix

There's a coexistence of different elements: on one hand an ethereal quality, on the other something more precise, cutting, almost acidic. In recent years I've also fallen in love with counterpoint, understood as accompaniment through interweaving melodic cells. So, for example, I use synthesizers in an almost orchestral way: not so much to build chords, but to create independent lines that, interlocking with each other, form the harmonic bed. It's like a pad, but animated by individual voices that move, that have a life of their own, giving the music a dynamic balance that breathes and changes shape.

In that case, the idea was to build a sequence of chords in which one voice in particular kept descending. The whole movement declines: it's a slow descent into something murkier, almost unsettling. There's this tension created precisely by the entirely downward motion, which creates a particular atmosphere, as if you were slowly slipping into a shadowy zone, into a murky depth.

Exactly, yes, that's precisely the descent. Among other things, it's the first song I wrote for this album. So it really is an immersion, a descent into a place I didn't really know: the deepest part of myself, the one that lies below, invisible, far beneath the surface.

Of the sea and “delle barche e transatlantici”

At times a bit disoriented, but there's something important to me that ends up prevailing. I'm not a great traveller by nature, in the sense that I don't like going somewhere just to see it. I'm more open to discovering things if that isn't the whole point of the trip. In that case, the risk would be putting pressure on your own feelings. "I came here to discover things, to try new experiences, so why am I not feeling much?"

If instead you're in a place for a specific reason and that's your main purpose, you're more inclined to be surprised by something you see along the way. The unexpected detours can be far more beautiful than the things you go looking for. It happens even when you're out running an errand on foot and along the way you see things you like. In short, you're actually more attentive, precisely because you're more distracted.

Exactly.

Not consciously. Actually, I think you can always understand what I'm saying, maybe not all of it right away. Inevitably someone will understand one line, someone else will understand another, someone will put two or three together and come up with their own interpretation. Even I don't have an overall picture until I've finished writing.

Yes, in my desire to express myself there's a search for connection, for the support of someone who can vibrate along with me. I think writing is also a way of asking an imaginary "you" whether they feel the same feelings and emotions as you.

No, it had all already happened. And besides, the American dream ended a long time ago. In that case, I wasn't really thinking of America in the literal sense. I was thinking more of the dream of a new world. It's a metaphor for waiting, for the desire for something that isn't there. Of course, what happened is tragic and has taken away some of our expectations, but there's no direct connection to current events, rather a purely inward identification with the state of mind of someone who's searching for something.

From the studio to the stage

Absolutely! Also because it's been a while since we've gone out to play with the full band, we've done some duo shows, piano and guitar, a format I really like too, but a real concert is another thing entirely!

Yes, more or less that's what I always do, but on this record there was one important novelty. I built a studio in Rome, so now I can also play and record the drums by myself, which I couldn't do before, and that's a huge advantage. I can redo things as many times as I want: change a part, revise a structure. The song can evolve freely. Even if I've already recorded the drums, it's not a problem: if the idea changes, I redo it. This gives me a lot more creative freedom. Of course, handling every aspect on my own, from the lyrics to the writing, the instruments, the arrangements, the production, the recording, takes a lot of time, which is probably also why it always takes me a while to finish an album, but in return I get to have full control over what I do.

(May 2, 2025)