Lucia Manca - Blessed nostalgia

Seven years of silence between your debut album and this unexpected return. Why did it take so long?

Yes, a long time during which music was, unfortunately, my very last priority. I only wrote when I felt a real need to, then I decided to finalize everything once I realized I had a set of songs I was fully convinced by. In the meantime I collaborated with Jolly Mare and went on tour playing with Populous on the Night Safari tour.

They were all positive experiences that enriched me artistically. Each of them has a completely different way of approaching production, and music in general, and it's great to discover their different points of view and compare or blend them with mine.

Listening to "Maledetto e Benedetto", I sense a fascination with the seductive atmospheres of vintage Italian cinema, the sultry soundtracks of the likes of Piccioni, Umiliani, and Tempera (I'm thinking especially of the relaxed atmospheres, with strings and so on, of "Noi"). Where do these arrangements come from?

Yes, I'm very fascinated by that world, in fact the choice of Matilde Davoli for production and arrangements was no accident. Throughout her career she's shown she's always very much at home with those sounds. I usually write by playing a few keyboard chords, which I use to try out and develop vocal melodies I have in my head, or saved as voice memos, then I write the lyrics and complete the demo's structure. As I put these demos together I would send them to Matilde, and she'd build the arrangements and the whole production around them, and the result was very satisfying for me. It's been about three years since we started working on the album, but we actually spent relatively little time on it, only meeting up when we were truly inspired and convinced by the result.

In “Eroi” you praise those who fight for their basic rights. In Italy, the question of sexuality, despite one important law, is still partly unresolved. How do you approach all this? What's your take on it?

There's still a lot of work to be done, and I think we should focus above all on the cultural side of things. Maybe we should push for education for young people in schools — everything's easier when you're not dealing with people who've inherited strange attitudes over the years. The problem remains (and I fear it will remain) with adults…

Ivan is a very inspired singer-songwriter, we've been good friends for a long time, and the collaboration came about very naturally — I played him two tracks that I wanted him to put his own touch on, and a few days later he played me the result and I was really happy with it.

The video for the aforementioned “Eroi” was shot at the wonderful Piano B in Lecce. As someone from Lecce, and purely in terms of organization and culture, I have to ask you: what do you think has already been done well, and what still needs to be done to keep bringing so much good music and culture to one of the most beautiful and culturally rich cities in our country?

We're doing well and I think we should keep going this way. The work of a few good promoters (often also backed by the Puglia region) has helped partly close that cultural gap that sets us apart from other Italian or European cities. Maybe we could focus more on exploration, investing in quality, which might not pay off right away, but will over time.

I've read that you're a big admirer of Ornella Vanoni and the noble, elegant singer-songwriter tradition of the past. Marisa Terzi, one of the most important lyricists and songwriters in Italian music, recently shared with me her idea of melancholy, answering a question of mine on the subject with one of her own poems: “Ti ho detto basta quando il meglio di te dovevo inventarlo io. E mi colse di sorpresa mentre i miei occhi diventarono lucidi tanto che non poteron vederti”. Here's the thing: in your music one can inevitably sense a deep connection with melancholy, with lost loves and things gone by. So I'll ask you the same question: what's your relationship with melancholy?

I have a very close relationship with melancholy, I often feel the need to feel melancholic about something I miss, or simply about periods gone by. Unfortunately this makes me lose touch with reality a bit, but I'm fine with that.

In the potential summer hit “Maledetto”, some sizzling keyboards pop up that bring to mind certain moods of Bertè; there's a deep disillusionment and an anger that's never held back. It's the most immediate, most “synth pop” track of the bunch. Speaking of which: do you like synth pop? How did this song come about? 

It was a team effort — just think, at the start it was only a rough sketch of mine with a bit of synth. Then Matilde built everything around it, and together with Ivan Luprano we sat down to write the vocal line and the lyrics. Synth pop has so many different shades that it's hard for me to have one single opinion about it.

What do you usually listen to? Who are your guiding lights, and who do you rate among today's new artists?

I listen to Beach House, Tennis, Grizzly Bear, but I'm also still attached to the Italian singer-songwriter tradition.

How are you preparing for your tour? What should we expect?

There will be four of us: me, Andrea Rizzo on drums, Gigi Chord on keyboards, and Matilde Davoli on bass. We're rehearsing and having fun, the stage is always exciting but also a gamble — let's see what happens…

The album is damn summery, but then a melancholic, autumnal “Settembre” shows up. It almost feels like a way of exorcising the silence of waiting, and a difficult winter ahead. Do you agree with me, or is there something more to it? Are you afraid of “winter”? “Settembre mi ha sempre rubato qualcosa, continuo a cantare anche per te”: what exactly do you want to tell us with these words?

"Settembre" is the first track I wrote for the album. It's about a violent month in which I lost the most important people in my life, one of them being my father. I started making music partly for him too, because he passed this passion on to me since I was little, and when I lost him I found myself a bit lost and without any drive, maybe because music brought me back to him, and to escape the pain I preferred not to sing. Then at some point, thanks to time and my friends, I started writing again, because you know, you can't stay away too long from what you love, and that's how "Settembre" was born, which I wrote for my father.

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