Rivulets

"A Mid-Spring Night's Dream", a clueless, wet-behind-the-ears scribbler might title this, in a forced bout of citation-happy enthusiasm. In reality, the biting chill we were forced to endure was well rewarded by hearing one of the greatest talents of the latest generation of avant-minimal singer-songwriters: Mr Rivulets, aka Nathan Amundson, from Duluth, favorite protégé of Alan Sparhawk, there in Salerno. But let's take things in order.

The venue isn't exactly ideal for a performance of this kind. Outdoors, shared with a generic crowd hungry for everything - eating, drinking, having fun... anything but staying in reverent silence in order to commune with the artist's feelings. Oh well, the sound system is a longstanding problem here, so there's little point cursing about it. Then again, there's none so deaf as those who will not hear... Opening the evening, the excellent Mr. Milk warms up the crowd with a delightful, delicately Drake-esque lament. A distinctive personality, only slightly shadowed by a mannered shyness that makes him likeable, and lets us appreciate his real expressive gifts as well as a decent flair for composition.

When he politely bows out, the (small) interested audience is satisfied enough, and alert enough, to welcome the evening's second guest, Amè.

Here we're travelling in the territory of Calexico, Black Heart Procession, if not Castanets. Yes, you guessed it: those sounds evoking desert landscapes, ghosts of deserted towns, dowsing visions, creaky yet melodious western suggestions; like a Wall Of Voodoo that's less turbulent but even more hallucinated. Not bad.

Right after the main course, Rivulets. Tall, gangly, with a boyish face that betrays a barely post-pubescent age, Nathan takes the small stage with nonchalance, showing no trace of nerves, even though the setting's less-than-ideal fit might well have warranted some. The young man bends skilfully over his guitar and begins intoning chord after chord in an unbroken flow. An apprehensive but deep voice, velvety, honeyed (in the best sense), in direct communication with the soul; like a spring of purest water, it gushes out uncontrolled and unchecked, and the air itself becomes an instrument for sharing feelings - at least for those who, in a kind of catalepsy, are able to surrender to the flourish of emotions that the man stirs up with the utmost naturalness. The wonderfully church-like flow of those notes reaches its peak in "Cutter", from the magnificent "Debridement", almost five minutes of unsettling sadness carrying with it the weight of a youth lived through but already spent.

The audience's chatter grows louder, Nathan gets annoyed, but he keeps dispensing magic as if on a divine mission, right to the end, to the very last drop of energy, through to the encore strongly demanded by the engaged crowd. There's no limit to the emotional climax a man can build with just a guitar, especially when that man possesses talent well out of the ordinary. Nathan proves, if proof were ever needed, that music is a matter of attitude, of the ability to create moments of mutual exchange of feeling, of shared perception, of emotional transference that the artist channels onto each individual listener.

Then, a bit of chat, the merch table with the CDs, the usual small talk, but above all the awareness of a talent that has now fully blossomed.

Special praise goes to the organisers, in the person of Raffaele Orilio, one of the few voices bucking the trend in a city still far too insensitive to "other" kinds of music.

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