C.F.F. E IL NOMADE VENERABILE - Circostanze

I C.F.F. e il Nomade Venerabile is a Apulian ensemble that places the blending of the arts at the heart of its proposal. Hence the definition they have given themselves: "paratheatrical rock", a music conceived as a prelude to visual staging and dance, as both the articulated structure of the pieces and the expressive intensity of the lyrics seem to confirm.

There was a season when the crown of so-called cultured pop was in the hands of artists such as Alice, Giuni Russo, Matia Bazar and Franco Battiato: the latter, today's sole remaining bastion of an expressive form that moves through the languages of the soul. We are talking about the same era in which the stages of the Italian underground were steeped in the noir existentialism of Faust'o or, to be more precise, of Diaframma's "Siberia" and "Tre Volte Lacrime". It is within these coordinates that the music of the C.F.F. draws its lifeblood, reclaiming evocative canons that have been unjustly neglected, swallowed up now by the neo-singer-songwriter wave, now by sometimes misunderstood demands for expressive immediacy.

From here springs an ambitious form of entertainment, certainly not free of risks, and for this very reason tackled with the right courage and with means that are as credible as possible. Means that cannot do without the vocal qualities of Anna Maria Stasi, who takes up, without disgracing it, the baton of our historic interpreters with a lyrical approach applied to pop, and guides it with real authority into the chiaroscuro mood of "Circostanze". An album that does not hide its misadventures and weaknesses, but displays them as evidence of a maturation and growth that pass like frames along its course, and for these reasons some naivety is forgivable.

Verrebbe da chiedersi cosa ne sarebbe della già buona "Io sono un albero", se capitasse fra le mani di Celso Valli, o di Roberto Colombo, senza nulla togliere a una produzione dai connotati spartani, certamente perfettibile ma che fa la sua parte, consolidando tratti dark non altrimenti possibili. Il brano, di cui il supporto contiene anche il video, rimanda alle escursioni chitarristiche e ritmiche dei primi Diaframma, però riscaldate dal tepore femminile della voce, e delle sue estraniazioni qui prossime all’universo di una Teresa De Sio d’annata. E’ proprio la voce di Anna Maria a suscitare pruriti mainstream (non sia inteso nell’accezione più sbracata), forte di un’estensione che scivola e che taglia insieme, tirando dritto con testi senza mediazione, liquido di contrasto che, attraverso rotondi canoni armonici, restituisce acuminate evocazioni. Efficaci stridori: voce melodiosa contro la cruda poetica del testo. Come in "Sasso", che declama gelidi intimismi ("Nella mia stanza immaginavo/ il rumore dell’acqua che scorre/ del vento che pettina l’erba") per inalberarsi nervosamente sull’inciso ("Ma m’incagliavo nell’arroganza insofferente dei critici tante opinioni nessuna fatica/ degli indie rocker pezze al culo very fashion/ nella cattolica chiesa che barcollava urlando perdono"), e in "Fiumani", in cui si consuma la versione sporca e rock dei Matia Bazar di "Melò" in testi come "Nello specchio opaco di un cesso pubblico/ cerco un gesto d’istinto, smorfie epidermiche/ il crimine, la malattia".

"Circostanze" is the cyclical recurrence of stirrings of the spirit, a feeling free of sentimentalism, a disquiet at times furious, at times dramatic (and the moving "Birkenau", the story of a German extermination camp narrated by the voice of the tree that holds up the barbed wire, bears witness to this), always and in any case deeply felt. A good starting point, a viaticum for a career that could claim, in the future too, more than a passing glance.

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21/03/2007