LIGABUE - Nome e cognome

Luciano Ligabue represents homegrown rock music for the average Italian. Fifteen years of career behind him: the massive success of “Certe notti” (and of “Buon Compleanno, Elvis!”) saddled him with this heavy role, shared more or less equally with Vasco Rossi. The fact remains that, despite this unassailable premise, Ligabue has for some time now stopped making music. This comes from someone who, for better or worse, grew up listening to his songs and gradually became a more discerning listener: the previous album, “Fuori come va?”, was already clear evidence of a presumably irreversible crisis. Maybe it's simple boredom, maybe there's nothing left to say and not even the desire to say it anymore. That was a stretched-thin, half-hearted record (which doesn't mean unpolished, just lazy), thrown out there just to have something to do, to go out on tour a bit and perhaps raise some cash for other projects (film).

“Nome e cognome” is an album cut from the same cloth. No ideas, hardened to work in stadiums but shaped for radio play, rock without frills yet glossed over. The first part stays, shakily, on the threshold of decency. The single “Il giorno dei giorni” is one of the (two) tracks that manages to offer some spark. A flash of cleaned-up electric guitar at the opening, a wall of guitars propping up the scaffolding and a bouncing bass line (these two will be the constants of all the harder tracks), an anthemic melody, a central section with an almost heavy bite cutting through the air. More sweetened electric guitar and tough-guy posturing (?) for the arena track par excellence, the rather mediocre “Happy Hour”, while acoustic guitar carries the passable power ballad (and second single) “L’amore conta”. “Cosa vuoi che sia”, a smoky, noir-ish ballad (as much as it can be with this sound) offers a touch of atmosphere (but just a touch).

Then, the dreaded disaster arrives: the brisk pop-rock of “Le donne lo sanno”, filler of the highest order; “Vivere a orecchio” and “E’ più forte di me” (yet more more-or-less hard-edged tracks, a kind of “Sopravvissuti e sopravviventi” ten years on, with the ugliness intact but stripped of its air of dissolution, and buried under plasticky production) are among the worst songs Ligabue has ever written. Listening to this second half of the album is genuinely hard going. This is a Ligabue who quotes himself but has gone soft, reliving things he already relived years ago, deadened by an approach that feels more distant and hard to bear.

The past truly comes back to life only in the sincere (and touching, and deeply sad, especially for anyone listening who remembers their own adolescence) tribute “Lettera a G.”, which manages to strike some hidden chord thanks to melodic lines and lyrics that bring back to the surface everything that's been said/seen over the years. ⟦Q1⟧: these are his classic images, steeped in memory and popular portraiture. ⟦Q2⟧: it's his poetics of disenchantment and abandonment showing itself at its best.

“Lettera a G.” is something of an epitaph for Luciano Ligabue, and “Nome e cognome” is his definitive tombstone. Dear readers, if you really can't do without them, I leave you all the stadium shows and platinum records: my game ends here, since there's no point carrying on.

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08/12/2011