STAGGERMAN - Tiny, Tiny, Tiny

There's a big dark car parked in the driveway across the street. It looks like it rolled straight out of some old b-movie scene. The devil has come knocking: he has a woman's face and a silent gaze. Will there be time to wash the dishes and turn off the television before he takes you away with him?

He goes by Staggerman, almost like the Stagger Lee of the old murder ballads: it would seem fated that the devil himself should turn up in his songs… But he brushes it off with simplicity: "actually, besides liking the sound of the word, I found the meaning of the verb to stagger fitting (something like to wobble, to totter, but also to astonish, to stun)". His given name is Matteo Crema: he comes from the shores of Lake Iseo and, after time spent in several local bands (from Van Cleef Continental to Union Freego), now arrives at his solo debut with a record of genuine, unaffected character.

A glimpse of countryside where the horizon of the Po Valley seems to blur into the American one: right from the cover, the roots of "Tiny, Tiny, Tiny" reach across the Ocean. "Sour Times" opens with an Eels-like gait, built on melancholy guitar phrasing suspended between glockenspiel chimes and synthetic echoes: "Sour times are coming for sweet people too", it announces in a precarious tone. And while "Ballad For A Lonesome Cowboy" evokes the Americana of the Felice brothers, the guitars of "Sinking Into The Floor" shatter into Wilco-esque splinters.

"I've always admired, especially in many of today's songwriters, the fact that they aren't afraid to engage with a way of making music that seems to have remained unchanged for the last seventy years", Crema states firmly. "They don't go chasing frantically after new forms, sounds and ways of writing". In the same way, his songs look to tradition as the soil in which to plant their own seeds, between bitter-tasting ballads ("Bad Habits") and nocturnal atmospheres ("My Neighbour, The Devil And Me"). And if at times the songwriting still seems to be finding its feet, falling prey to one too many stereotypes, as a good craftsman Staggerman regards his own work with humility: "The title of the album, 'Tiny, Tiny, Tiny', comes precisely from the fact that this is the first time I've tried my hand at songwriting", he explains without pretension.

A harmonica chases the dusty melody of "The Man Who Sleeps On The Couch", while a clarinet and a vibraphone cast dark shadows over "House By The Pond" and "Mental". Then the profile of Mr. E peeks through again in the sarcastic, Shootenanny!-style blues of "Backseat Lovers". It took two years of work to record "Tiny, Tiny, Tiny", squeezed into the spare time left over from Crema's other musical pursuits. The first effort released under the Staggerman name (offered as a free download on the Lombard songwriter's official website) came together between 2007 and 2009 within the walls of the Diesel 24062 studios, in the heart of the Bergamo countryside, with the invaluable help of his friend Ronnie Amichetti (leader of Union Freego).

Fate, in Staggerman's songs, is a fortune-cookie message found in a Chinese restaurant, a true word spoken just when all you want to hear is yet another lie. But there's no need for alibis when you have nothing to hide: in the end, amid the birdsong that forms the backdrop to "Spoiled Flower", life seems to open up like certain autumn days, when the sun turns mild, the waters grow still and the colors burn warmer than ever. "All that I can bring to you is just a spoiled flower": after all, it only takes one crumpled stem to light up a song.

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29/10/2010