ALESSANDRO DUCOLI - Anche io non posso entrare

What's most striking about singer-songwriters like Alessandro Ducoli, and about bands like Bacco il matto, his parallel project, is the almost grotesque lack of attention from media and public given the freshness of what he offers. This isn't because the latest album of his rather young career is a historic masterpiece, but because, measured against many other releases in the same genre that have enjoyed far greater fortune, "Anche io non posso entrare" really shines. And, curiously, not for that special immediacy, that certain wild impetus one might say, which has been somewhat lost in the blandness of mainstream pop but survives thanks to many underground rock bands. On the contrary, the album stands out for the refined touch of its arrangements, for its ability to be intriguing and say something worth listening to, even for its capacity to evoke an unprecedented musical landscape, a sort of rock epic like many others in the past but one that, nowadays, is rare to find amid the trappings of empty record packaging. And it's a gripping epic, Ducoli's. The epic of provincial damnation that winds through the nightspots of Val Camonica, wrapping up sketches of sad little stories and Saturday-night rituals in coils of cigarette smoke. The epic of loves that drown in young wine even before they begin, and in the gray hungovers of the following morning. The epic, too, of someone who feels a bit of an outsider in a world that, after 25 years of life, has already shattered all the hopes of youth, and feels that tomorrow holds no certainty whatsoever... Ducoli's world, in short, finds its finest synthesis in this album.

Having abandoned the erudite reworkings of Po Valley southern rock (the kind, to be clear, that went wild in the late '80s with bands like Rats and Negrita, and that found in Ligabue its greatest "popular" representative) on which the most recent Bacco il Matto was built, and having found a more substantial and conclusive form for the music-hall sketches of the previous "Malaspina" (engaging in places, a touch long-winded in others), the rocker from Breno turns out eleven tracks straddling blues rock and the Italian singer-songwriter tradition, managing to reconcile Springsteen and Fossati, Tom Waits and Guccini, John Mellencamp and Capossela, all with great ease and, above all, great personality, so much so that out of the countless influences on offer not one feels entirely convincing on its own. It should be said - and this is a crucial point in our case - that this is an extremely cohesive record. This is partly why it makes little sense to pin down its influences too firmly, and for the same reason, while it's true that every track works perfectly, without a single moment of flagging energy, there are no particularly inspired flashes of brilliance either.

The author's style is solidly in focus: concrete, sharp, poetic but never solemn, direct but never crude, pessimistic but never defeated. And, musically speaking, decidedly above average, thanks above all to the fine cast of musicians Alessandro has surrounded himself with. It is perhaps precisely this clarity of intent, which more than once risks becoming repetitive, that accounts for the lack of standout episodes. And if we were to pause to praise a model of elegance like "Il primo ballo", embellished with graceful flourishes that fade into a melancholy Latin American ending, or the tragicomic farce of the picaresque protagonist of "Giovanna", or even the pub rock of "Dieci metri sotto la citta'" or the composed reggae of "Tre linee confuse", we would certainly be doing a disservice to the other seven tracks, which represent exactly, just as much as the four mentioned, what we'd want to hear after two in the morning in some boozy little provincial dive, by now certain that the burn of whisky on our palate will carry us through until dawn. Hoping that in that very place, sooner or later, a mysterious patron named Bacco will show up, pick up a guitar, and treat us to his charming, none-too-fortunate songs.

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24/10/2006