ALESSIO CALIVI - Sirene, vetri, urla e paperelle

Of Calabrian descent, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Alessio Calivi made his debut with "Forme e stati" (2010), already boasting the 6 Marlene Kuntz-esque minutes of "Ho scoperto una strada deserta", along with other long, tormented songs and the whispered neurosis of "THC".

After some experience as a producer, Calivi forges his sharpest artistic statement yet, "Sirene, vetri urla e paperelle", drawing on newfound technical and poetic skill.

Small but effective innovations are scattered throughout. The 7 minutes of "Jorge & Sheis" amount essentially to the song of a depressed medieval minstrel wandering a land of icy filaments, which then flares up into a track with a progressive-rock bent. The seraphic schizophrenia of "Palpitazione isterica", furious tears that rip through an almost Tibetan calm, recalls certain delirious moments from early Cccp.

A couple of cadaverous spoken-word passages, thankfully not too extended, propped up by guitar-and-synth adagios (notably the oboe-like one in "Bucolico post-industriale"), then find a destructive outlet in the 9-minute title track, a noise-rock set piece built on granite-grey, leaden walls of chords that nonetheless keep shifting in tone and colour, before collapsing into a faint cadence for guitar, keyboard and the leader's distant, voiceless murmurs: his own idea of agony and death. Fittingly, the closing "Parctum" breathes out a soundscape of electronic mist.

This album, dark with an almost embarrassing darkness, would make even the most hardline Massimo Volume fans jealous. When it lifts its head, it's out of despair. Or self-irony; the pop chorus - when there is one - comes in strange shapes: in "Berlino" it's instrumental, reduced to electronic flashes, while in "Tutto bene?" it's set within a maddeningly irregular, barely singable time signature. The single and video, on the other hand, go to the far more conventional "Storia stonata". Bolstered by Davide Furfaro's second guitar, the rhythm section of Salvatore Crucitta on bass and Pasquale Rao on drums, and Giuseppe Tigani's subliminal synth on the title track. Dedicated to Giorgio Marinoni, watercolour painter from Biella.

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29/04/2015