GARBO - Gialloelettrico

There are musicians who settle into spaces that already exist, laid out along well-paved roads crowded with billboards that grab even the most distracted passer-by's attention; and then there are musicians who build a city of notes tailored to themselves, with harmonic forms that are anything but immediate, appealing but never obvious, shaded with nuances so discreet they demand a keen eye and a genuine spirit of observation. Looking back over the career of Garbo, there's no doubt where he belongs: you'll find him in a place all his own, sitting in the least conspicuous corner of some stylish bar (with an electric-yellow sign, naturally), scanning the patrons with apparent detachment, studying their behaviour, sensing which way the wind is blowing without ever changing his pose. He's an artist who has always kept pace with his times while keeping an eye on a possible future, just as much now — watching the world with the eyes of a man who hasn't yet lost his sense of wonder and curiosity — as he did back on the now-distant Sanremo stages of the '80s, when he voiced the pop-decadent anxieties of a boy forced to grow up too fast.

In the end, then as now, Garbo's challenge is to reconcile pop's accessibility with lyrics that shun the clichés of easy-listening music, without disowning its tradition, using electronics as his means of expression: an ambitious blend to pull off, difficult to sustain without slip-ups, yet one that has long since become a settled part of his stylistic signature. We might say that “Gialloelettrico” is a concept album about everyday life, its fil rouge being the technological noises of a typical day that run throughout the record in between the songs (opening with “Intro da me” and closing with “Ci vediamo dopo…”, passing through restaurants, the metro, restrooms, supermarkets and so on), shaped by this singular singer-songwriter into a kind of romanticism for modern hearts, wrapped in a stylized pop where, in any case, the music itself remains the true protagonist.

The album boasts some exceptional guests: it's no accident that leading figures of the Italian alternative scene such as Morgan of Bluvertigo, Boosta of Subsonica and Davide Bertotti of Delta V chose to put their names to the project; it's reassuring to see that Garbo — so often unfairly overlooked by the media — doesn't get the same treatment from artists who, in one way or another, owe him a debt. While the keyboard nocturne “Garbo” is Bertotti's delicate contribution, it's on the measured, robotic yet romantic stride of “Andarsene” that Morgan stamps his own kind of lyric, full of flashes of hypersensitive realism (“Ho sempre dato per scontata la ripetitiva alternanza dei giorni e delle notti, i ritmi occidentali, le abitudini…”); but these dutiful tributes are just additions to a substance that Garbo builds on his own, guided by a solid compositional instinct and long experience in crafting songs — whether radio-friendly singles (we can spot at least two potential ones: “Giallo”, but above all “Onda Elettrica”), classically-flavoured ballads (“Forse”), or well-judged dance digressions (“Se”, “Amanti”).

If there's one piece of advice to give, it's to set aside prejudice, ostracism and labels, and look for the answers where they actually are: in Italy's controversial, troubled musical landscape, Garbo rightfully claims his place, and still finds it today with full legitimacy.

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30/04/2026