CALCUTTA - Evergreen

Plenty of people are waiting at the gate for Calcutta, ready to check whether the young singer-songwriter still holds up, today one of the key figures of the new "itpop" scene. But to really understand Calcutta you'd have to come to Latina, breathe it in, feel it on your skin. Suppose you don't like the beaches of Sabaudia or the posh evening stroll, suppose you don't have a car to speed off toward the capital: well, you might as well slit your wrists. Rome is so close that in Latina almost nothing truly exciting can ever happen, and you metabolize that from your teenage years on. The little that does happen, Calcutta tells it, with sincerity, sensitivity and involvement, through an urban poetry that steps out of the provinces to become universal, better than the other famous singer from his hometown ever managed to do.

But more than a few people in town don't love him, perceive him as a mysterious object, considering those little songs "without much substance", the kind anyone could write. Next July Calcutta will play in his hometown's stadium (used by a team now playing in the Dilettanti league after the collapse that followed three miraculous years in Serie B), but it's an exceptional event: over the past three years he's played time and again in every corner of the country, but almost never in Latina; in fact, he's decided to move to Bologna, in search of a new dimension, both artistic and political. Hundreds of shows played everywhere, drawing ever bigger crowds, to the point of selling out arenas and soon stadiums too. His personal revenge against everything standing in his way, against those who brand him as aloof or as a facile pop lightweight. Meanwhile he keeps writing those songs, lucid, true, real, for himself, and for some time now for others too, some even more "important" than him.

Edoardo has put ten of them into "Evergreen", likely new earworms, not just for the neighborhood but for the entire indie circuit. Because Calcutta has finally managed to step out of the provinces, his songs have become the anthems of a generation, learned by heart across Italy not only by teenagers and post-teenagers, but also by unsuspected types who sing them secretly in the shower, careful not to let their kids or friends notice. The Calcutta phenomenon isn't deflating, as many had too boldly predicted the day after "Mainstream" — quite the opposite: it keeps spreading, no longer a passing fad but a real singer-songwriter, like the models he's always drawn from. But without leaning too heavily on Carboni or Dalla anymore: he's been smart enough to find a personal path that no one else could have traced but him, with his knack for being at the center of the scene in a way that always seems so casual. The bet has paid off; the passing trends were all those who, having emerged after him, burned out in the sun within a few weeks of exposure, sucked into premature oblivion.

He's seen the cameras of Corso Sempione, and jokes about it — though maybe not entirely joking — singing in "Rai" that now he doesn't want to leave anymore ("I want to stay here", he declares, echoing the national Vasco). Success in music today no longer inflates your bank account the way it used to, but seeing thousands of young people sing your songs is a drug, an adrenaline rush you can't give up once you've tried it. Calcutta always pokes a bit of fun at us, conjuring up a rural soul, posing for the cover photo surrounded by a flock of sheep, anticipating the bizarre ideas later voiced by mayor Raggi and beating the opening image of the new Sorrentino film to the punch. To remain "Evergreen", to aspire to simplicity, to cultivate loves and tell them in the words of everyday life, without reaching for philosophical hyperbole or literary contraptions. "He speaks as plainly as he eats", as they say in the provinces, and words are firmly at the center of his idea of music, words that describe small everyday realities, alternating with situations bordering on the surreal, where reality becomes surrealism and surrealism becomes real. Like "the fog in the folds", like "I eat the dark with pesto". And then the generational slogans, fired off at the heart of the choruses, like "I feel my heart racing", "Hey, idiot" and "It's been ages since you got upset, ages since you got offended", poured respectively into the three instant classics "Paracetamolo", "Pesto" and "Orgasmo".

There are the words, which make "Evergreen" more of an album than its predecessors (thinking about it, the first version of "Mainstream" had barely seven sung tracks), but there are also meticulously crafted arrangements — one example is what happens at the 2'10" mark of the opening "Briciole", the track that immediately gives the album a decisive push, or when you catch an unexpected guitar popping up from one side, or an unforeseen drum pattern from the other. Some ideas remain minimalist: "Saliva" keeps the ups and downs of the voice in plain sight, "Dateo" serves as a sort of instrumental coda to it, a little electronic divertissement, off-kilter. Elsewhere new solutions are tried out, opening up interesting sonic prospects for the future, as with the flanger that wraps around "Nuda nudissima".

The tender Calcutta no longer exists, the one who just wanted to "disappear into an embrace" and "learn to walk again", let alone the lost one who wanted to go home but wasn't quite sure whose home. The boy is becoming a man, he has orgasms on staircases and amid kiwi fields he'd like to be buried in, and binoculars to look more closely into each other's eyes, he keeps churning out infectious choruses. He speaks the same language as his peers and evokes the precarious present of today's young people ("you'll call me from a call center") in images that blend tenderness and insolence ("in my eyes there's a leaking barrel", "I'm wasting the wasted time that suits me", "it's been ages since you spat at the mirror to wash your face"), images in which today's teenagers will be able to see themselves again. At one point he draws a parallel with footballer Dario Hubner, from Trieste, another figure who grew up in the provinces and after years of hard graft went on to top the scorers' chart in Serie A.

I met him one evening, Calcutta, and he confessed to me under his breath "I'll make one more record and then I'm done, by now I know how to write a good song". And yet "Evergreen" won't be his last record; if anything, it was the trickiest one to make, given all the spotlights pointed at him. But he didn't care what anyone thought, continuing to churn out successful new singles with Swiss punctuality, never losing an ounce of freshness, urgency or easy attitude. People will keep ripping him off, and for him that can only be a source of pride. More genuine and less calculated than the various Giornalisti of the moment, for now he remains a cut above everyone else aspiring to become the new Calcutta. Those waiting at the gate for him will have to wait at least one more lap along the river.

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24/05/2018