Hugo Race & Fatalists

And now the game really starts to get interesting, dear Hugo Race. Better late than never, one might say, but what matters is that he's finally become the singer-songwriter he'd dreamed of being for who knows how long. Yes, indeed. It took him maybe seventeen albums under his own name or credited to the True Spirit, not counting the endless roster of side projects (Sepiatone, Transfargo, Merola Matrix, Dirtmusic, Songs With Other Strangers) that saw him range over the course of fifteen years from kitsch electronics to Malian cross-pollinations, before arriving at the exemplary synthesis of rock and folk he's only reached very recently. Trial and error, in the most classic tradition of artistic education, refining technique and ear one step at a time, absorbing influences that long weighed on him (at least in the eyes of critics), letting a voice that's already half a blessing in its own right settle into place, and drawing on those fortunate early experiences (a good five years spent alongside Nick Cave straddling the late Birthday Party and early Bad Seeds, plus the unforgettable Wreckery chapter) that for anyone with less backbone would always and inevitably have weighed like a gilded curse. Learning from his own mistakes and keeping a humble profile that's a rare commodity, the Australian singer and musician has honed his craft in the absolute quiet of his Italian retreat, backed by the excellent Forlì-based collective Sacri Cuori (Antonio Gramentieri, Diego Sapignoli and Francesco Giampaoli), who have been accompanying him in the studio and on tour for some years now under the guise of the Fatalists. That this meeting brought about a decisive jolt for our man was already clear from the first fruit of the collaboration, that “Fatalists” – aptly named – recorded three years ago in Romagna by a Race who was in rough shape (due to pneumonia), yet as intense as he had rarely been before. A truly “fatal” attraction, we might say with a bit of wit, which after an acoustic covers collection co-produced with his close friend Cesare Basile (“No, But It's True”) led to the huge surprise of “We Never Had Control”, in all likelihood the most accomplished album of his entire solo career.

Writing about Hugo Race had always been, until now, a bit unfair to him. No review could avoid getting tangled in an almost inevitable game of comparisons: from the long wave of the maudit bohemianism of the King Ink era, to the obvious parallels between his voice and that of the far more famous Mark Lanegan, not to mention the broad array of desert-folk stereotypes to be neatly trotted out alongside big names like Howe Gelb or David Eugene Edwards. All fair enough, ultimately, because Hugo's music has openly absorbed the lessons of these masters, yet it always came out diminished by the unhealthy but seemingly unavoidable habit of comparison. “We Never Had Control” has finally freed the globetrotting musician from his perpetual, underwhelming role as the shadow artist, the stock stand-in, a scaled-down version of some other guy who was always supposedly better than him. Before, that certain something had always been missing, even though it was present in his genetic makeup, in his musical DNA. The surprise of this new record lies instead in its scope, its breadth. No more meticulous sketches faithful to someone else's originals, no more scholarly, disqualifying adherence to models learned by rote, gone is the provincialism in which he seemed to have shut himself away. In their place, an album written and played magnificently by a top-tier artist, within that borderless scene that embraces the most disparate declinations of everything that, for convenience, gets lumped together under the label Americana. The live translation of this sound – so unmistakable and yet so elusive, cornered by the unequivocal nature of some of its clichés yet as agile and gripping as few others – amounted to a kind of appeal hearing we wouldn't have missed for the world, hoping fervently to find the confirmations we were looking for.

And the verdict turned out to be highly encouraging, it must be said without the slightest hesitation. At the end of an extremely generous show by the Australian and his three bandmates (joined for two long stretches by saxophonist Francesco Valtieri), the most vivid impression was of having witnessed a genuine “great” at work, in the form of an articulate, free-flowing dissertation on the wonders of a style that has blood, iron and shadows running through it, a heart beating with extraordinary energy, and plenty of arid, deeply fascinating landscapes. Desert Folk, then, the label that immediately springs to mind to place the former Cave foot soldier on the GPS of today's alternative scene. Something more, however, than a dull convention, given the wealth of suggestions and nuances with which the various songs are enriched, each carving out its own distinct personality. From the blistering opening lashes of “Dopefiends” building in intensity, Hugo showed himself firmly in command of the excellent Sacri Cuori flotilla, lighting fires with his magnetic Epiphone and tearing openings in the tightly woven fabric shaped by Antonio Gramentieri's pyrotechnic Fender, an electric chiseler of the highest order. Backed by a rhythm section as precise as it was understated (Sapignoli's essential, spare drumming, Giampaoli's soft, unassuming bass), the two guitars immediately established themselves as the evening's protagonists, giving rise to a kind of curious duel, a clash-encounter between two distinct sonic philosophies: Race's raw one, holder of the atmospheric trademark that is the group's true expressive key, and the virtuosic, muscular one of the Romagna-born musician, essential in lending depth of field and jolts to the scorched landscapes sketched out by the Fatalists band. The search for a delicate balance between these two souls and a third, Hugo's raspy voice, played out beautifully on the crepuscular western of “The Serpent Egg” (which strongly evokes “The Firstborn Is Dead”) after the opener and the furious 16 Horsepower-style gallop of “No Stereotype” had seen the Italian's ringing six-string overstep its bounds a touch too much.

From this point on, Hugo Race took command like an enlightened sovereign.

Indulgent with his fellow performers on stage but resolute in charting the way through such distinctive landscapes – now barren and shadowy, now rugged but vividly colored – he was always equally at ease with particularly headlong registers (“Ghostwriter”) and with the gentler, more introspective cadences of other pieces (chief among them the incredible track that lent its title to the latest album). “We Never Had Control” was played back almost in full, together with significant picks from “Fatalists” and no forays into older pages of his career, so as to capture as faithful a snapshot as possible of the singer-songwriter's most recent incarnation.

From rock rooted in the fertile soil of youthful memories (“Will You Wake Up”) to sharp, nervy minimalism (“Slow Fry”), from the epic-turned-crystalline sound of Lanegan's “Field Songs” (“No Angels Fear To Tread”) to the magic of Giant Sand revisited through the lens of his own gentleness (“Snowblind”, superb), it was all emotional ups and downs, yet marked by a simply miraculous cohesion of form and sound. A masterclass in style, as noted, that in the lengthy encore segment couldn't help but embrace more typically alt-country shadings (“Never Say Never”) or darker exorcisms with a distinct Wovenhand-like stamp, all within a classicism nonetheless branded through and through by his own sharp temperament. And at the end of nearly two hours of intense performance, there was room for the aching lullaby of “Cry Me A River”, the ideal farewell from an audience enthralled by the ancient spells cast by this great connoisseur of the desert.

If he can deliver in the studio on the promises that "We Never Had Control" has also made on the live front, Hugo Race can no longer be dismissed as a minor figure among the many, or as just another artist in search of an author within an already crowded niche of great talents. His quest, more than anything, could finally be called happily concluded.

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