Ten Little Italians

LA SETE – La Sete Ep (2014, self-released)

pop-rock

The La Sete project was born in 2012 in Milan, bringing together David Moriconi (vocals), Alex Roggero (bass), Roberta D'Elia (violin and vocals), Fabio Maggioni (guitar), Emanuele Cappa (drums) and Federico Martucci (keyboards and trumpet). The self-titled Ep marks the absolute debut of the Lombard sextet: four songs ranging from pop-rock to gentle singer-songwriter fare – "Rospo", with a whiff of Le Vibrazioni – all the way to folk ("Tra la gente a posto tutto scorre normalmente", which would sit comfortably on a Pan del Diavolo album). The melancholy, nicely arranged waltz "Trentenni in pausa pranzo" is a highlight. A quarter of an hour that's enough to reveal a new, interesting act. The Ep was self-produced and mastered by Giovanni Versari. Available as a free download on the band's SoundCloud (Fabio Guastalla 6.5/10)

MANGARAMA – Alieno (2014, Libellula)

dream-rock

A quartet from Asti active since 2001 but only now arriving at their debut full-length. The band's idea seems to be to offer a rock sound that's clean but at the same time gently distorted, so as to come across as both grounded and dreamy. To achieve this, the music is discreetly enriched with well-judged electronic touches. Over the course of the album, this basic idea is developed in different ways, with each track distinguished from the others by tempo, sonic heft, and degree of serenity or unease. The only drawback is the vocal timbre, a sort of halfway point between Marco Mengoni and Giuliano Sangiorgi; otherwise everything works splendidly, and the band shows great clarity of ideas, the ability to range imaginatively and coherently within its chosen framework, and a solid melodic instinct. A nice surprise for now: we'll wait to see whether the singer can better adapt to the international scope and emotional depth of the music (Stefano Bartolotta 6.5/10)

FRANCESCO CERCHIARO – A piedi nudi (2014, DischiSovietStudio)

singer-songwriter

With a couple of Eps already behind him, Veneto singer-songwriter Francesco Cerchiaro arrives at his full-length debut with "A piedi nudi", eleven tracks that are the fruit of three years of studio work. The formula is that of a spare, immediate pop songwriting, paired with lyrics about childhood, adulthood and old age, moving between melancholy vignettes ("Rebecca", "Cammino da solo") and sly nods to the Italian scene ("Il mio cane in una stanza", which echoes Gino Paoli). Current affairs also slip in between the lines, as in "Cara Laura". Overall, a record not lacking in ideas, capable of shifting shape when needed in search of other stylistic solutions: the folk echoes of "Filastrocche per bambini", the old-world atmospheres of "Ultimo valzer a Teheran". Worth a listen (Fabio Guastalla 6.5/10)

SHAME – Entropia (2014, self-released)

grunge

A trio from Brianza active since 1996 but only now arriving at their second LP, six years after their first. They describe their style as "extremely powerful grunge", and those simple words are enough to make clear that the band's sole aim is to play exactly the music they like, without much pursuit of novelty or personality. Suffice it to say they're a powerful grunge version – precisely – of Soundgarden, and readers will immediately know what they're in for if they decide to give this record a listen. A work strictly for genre fans, then, but it must be said the content is solid and essentially beyond reproach from every angle. The songwriting is honest, the vocal timbre sufficiently expressive, the instrumental side is far from flat and has the right dynamism, and there's also good variety among the tracks, which don't all sound the same at all. If you don't care at all about personality and just want to hear credible, well-made grunge, this record is for you (Stefano Bartolotta 6/10)

THE MENTOS – ComedySkaPunkHeroes (2014, autoprodotto)

wacky, ska-punk

Fourth album in seven years for this ska-punk band from Sabaudia, now expanded to a six-piece lineup, complete with horns punctuating the driving tracks that sketch out quirky situations and small-scale characters (sometimes friends of the musicians), told in an amusing and hyper-ironic way, exaggerated to the point of becoming endearingly unreal. A parade of corrosive, tightly rhythmic sketches, always impeccable in style, with a mix of sounds running from ska to rock, via reggae and the breeziest pop, with playful sixties and disco nods thrown in. The Mentos are no strangers to our pages, and on their 2014 self-release they confirm everything good they've sown so far. Carefree lightness to the nth degree, but behind it you can hear the background of people who've consumed plenty of music. Some ask them for a more mature record after years of novelty songs, but when a formula works this well, why change it? Especially if tracks like these keep packing out venues along the Lazio coast... (Claudio Lancia 6/10)

CECCO E CIPO – Lo Gnomo e lo Gnu (2014, Labella)

songwriter, folk-pop

A duo of very young singer-songwriters from the Empoli area, Simone "Cecco" Ceccanti and Fabio "Cipo" Cipollini return with "Lo gnomo e lo gnu". Their vocabulary of styles has grown, while the tenderness that defines them remains. The two deliver their folk ditties in Cochi e Renato-style vaudeville with banjo ("Orazio") and with fiddle and whistle ("La scatola", which even breaks into a wild Mexican dance), in mazurkas driven by a swelling piano ("Panini"), even in zydeco ("Ziguli") and beach garage-pop ("Trottola"), up to a peak of contagious singability and danceability in "Ninna". The multi-voiced folk-pop of "La licenza di tuttologo" and the love ballad "Be'" belong to their best, well-established style, while the childish techno-pop of "Hanno fatto un monumento al grasso" and a generic "Minestrone" (which at the start plagiarizes Battisti's "La canzone del sole") feel out of place and out of scale. After their crystalline, near-concept debut "Roba da Maiali" (2011), the two repeat themselves with just slightly thicker arrangements and even more lovable choruses that sound and dance like nursery rhymes for children: there's no generational caustic soda in their stories, just a fairy-tale, untainted sort of memory. Cameos from Lodo Guenzi (Lo Stato Sociale), Tommaso Spinelli (L'Orso), Sushi Rain, Ragazzi Scimmia, Fantomatik Orchestra, mothers, girlfriends, sisters. Appearance on X-Factor 2014. (Michele Saran 6/10)

I GOLDONI – Un diversivo (2014, self-released)

demential pop-rock

Summer, as everyone knows, is the season dedicated to carefree abandon and lightness, and in music too a little irreverent, demented edge doesn't hurt at all — quite the opposite. Then there are those who know how to do this well, a bit better than others, and every now and then some new name pops up worth keeping an eye on. Goldoni have been playing together for a couple of years; they're a trio made up of minimal drums, acoustic guitar and vocals. Starting out as a background band for aperitivi or intimate get-togethers, they soon began writing their own songs to liven up their audience's evenings. And they found themselves right at home above all in telling small, universal stories about today's twentysomethings 2.0. The tone is both sarcastic and bitter, the attitude breezy, the lyrics often spiced up with typical Roman dialect inflections. Like a hypothetical cross between Elio e le Storie Tese and Mannarino. Goldoni are Nando, Faj and Zezzy. Former Desert Motel member Massimo Gresia contributed to the making of the record, playing bass and keyboards on some tracks. A distillation of carefree abandon, even if in the end it's shrewd rationality that wins out, as is only right in these difficult times (Claudio Lancia 6/10)

VOSTOK – Vostok (2014, Blotch)

alt-rock

Vostok, a quartet from Livorno, make their debut with “Vostok”, which, among other things, ends up aping Queens Of The Stone Age (“Sui tuoi passi”, “Eva”, a more personal ballad), with its most lyrical peak in the refrain of “La sindrome di Danuz”. Reheated leftovers of Italian-style hard-rock and grunge, but the songs aren't badly written and the performance has an energy that at times — “Baudelaire” (also the first single) — is almost punk (Michele Saran 5.5/10)

PUSH BUTTON GENTLY – Uru Ep (2014, self-released)

alt-rock

An arty-edged mash-up and a psych-garage jam attitude are at the heart of the Lombardy project Push Button Gently, who here present their new EP, “Uru”, this year's follow-up to the only LP they've released (in 2013). Frontman Julio Speziali's distinctly histrionic, Albarn-esque streak stirs against the indie-rock backdrop of the tracks, at times a bit dated (“You Are You”). The aforementioned “art” ambitions aren't always backed up by sufficient musical ideas (the one partial exception being the dreamy mumbling of the toy-cabaret in “Disappearing”), remaining half-formed quiet-loud suggestions as in “Tarpit Cock And The Bazoukie Returns”, which moves from Fugazi to Guided By Voices, before dissolving into a sketched-out psychedelic groove. Rather far from the idea of music they perhaps wish to put forward (Lorenzo Righetto 5.5/10)

KEIN – In Bloom (2014, Audiobulb)

electro

Already a member of Flug and an established sound artist, Kein — a foreign-sounding moniker that's actually thoroughly Italian in origin (Molise) — made his debut with the digital mechanisms of the 4-track EP “Suburban Turntablism” (2007), followed by the 5-track EP “Fondle” (2009), where he tackled rhythm for the first time. A fusion of the two arrives with his first album “In Bloom”, achieving a good result on the dolefully measured “Untitled”, topped by breezes of reprocessed chamber sounds, and to a lesser extent on the ambient keyboard melody of “Look After Me”. From there, the composer slips into the clichés of glitch and IDM, and the embellishments do little to help — the atmospheric electronic swells of the title track, the organ-like overtones of “Brixton Rd”, the dark breakbeat cloak of “Ostalgie”. A short album, its length not much longer than the previous EPs, which squanders what little it has, all sample-and-sound workout and almost no composition. Mastered at the prestigious Skyline Tonfabrik in Dusseldorf. Artwork by Civico 32 (Michele Saran 5/10)

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10/12/2024