Carl Brave & Franco126

Carl Brave and Franco126 sing about the lives of kids just like themselves, only in a city infinitely bigger than Perugia. They sing about romance in the age of car sharing and smartphones, the very same ones glinting on a early-July evening at the Giardini del Frontone, during slow dances that once upon a time would have burned through gas instead of batteries.

When the twenty-something crowd greets The Pills with a half-roar, you realize that Umbrian kids and out-of-town university students partly dream about the Capital, partly idealize it, and partly go looking for it, finding it in those who were actually born there, like Carl Brave and Franco, who tell it to you the way they see it and the way they know it, without too many frills. In front of me, Altea and Caterina have come a fair distance from Fabriano, but gladly, because the Trastevere duo amuses them. They say that Carl and Franco's lyrics, even when they get raunchy, never tip over into vulgarity. Maybe that's also the secret of their success: celebrating sentimentality while balancing it with raw devices and insignificant details, theoretically even "anti-poetic" ones: “Ho saltato il compleanno di mio nonno/ Il giorno dopo è morto, l’ho abbracciato in sogno/ Lei, ai suoi piedi Jeffrey Campbell”. Umbria blends in well, being everywhere wilder and more rural than Rome - the Festival's logo even has dinosaurs on it. It emulates Rome as much as it can, and partly succeeds, whether because, in the end, everyone once lived under the Papal States, or because the Perugian dialect at times even sounds a bit Roman.

The Roman duo draws support from two different crowds: indie purists and rap lovers. When they open with "Solo guai" members of both factions sway slowly, sketching out hip hop-style moves, but it's when the chorus kicks in that it all turns into a collective ritual at the altar of melody and sing-alongs. "Americane alla John Cabot", "la solita vecchia Santa Maria", "è del Flaming ed è come se venisse da altri pianeti": at certain points in the show few people actually know what they're singing, but who cares?

Alongside Carlo Luigi Coraggio (Carl Brave) and Franco Bertollini (Franco126) there's a drummer, a synth player, two horns, two guitars and a bass. They draw at random from the tracklist of "Polaroid", their debut album, a collection of snapshots free of moralizing, crystallizing unrepeatable moments, more or less meaningful, but unique nonetheless. Amid heavy autotune use and the odd off-key note, Carlo and Franco bet everything on feeling and genuineness, like someone seducing you purely through charm. People dance with beers in hand, singing in bursts the lines they remember best. "Due rom fanno un falò con le buste Crai", they shout when "Lucky Strike" kicks in, the most drawn-out and heaviest track of the set. Between a flash watercolor of Pigneto and a polaroid snapped on "tombini tatuati SPQR", someone asks me if I know what "m'hanno alzato un'altra volta il tergicristalli" means. I answer that it's the nicest possible way of letting you know you've parked like crap. Approved.

To pad out the set and beef up the tracklist, a few new songs from "Notti Brave" (Carl Brave's solo work without Franco) also make an appearance. Standouts among them are "Fotografia" and "Camel Blu" - with the ghosts of Michielin and Giorgio Poi (also on Bomba Dischi) singing from who knows where.

Revivals of Neffa and very distant echoes of neomelodico (Rome is, after all, the first city of the South) carry the show arm in arm toward its close. "Interrail" makes the eighteen-year-olds at the Frontone dream, kids about to leave any day now, freed from the burden of their oral exams like a prisoner who's just finished serving their sentence.

It closes, of course, with the big guns. "Sempre in due" is a bitter song, cold as scissors brushing your neck while they cut your hair, about love or friendship, who knows, it depends on who's listening, but the message is always the same: "Tu dimmi dove sei, mi faccio tutta Roma a piedi". When the backing track for "Pellaria" kicks in, the lights go up over the Giardini: it's the signal that it's time to head home. Two chords, two, and a beat that sounds like it was borrowed from the Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling". Someone shouts the word "pizzardoni". Few people know what it means tonight, here in Perugia. But who cares?

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