reviews / 2026

CANDRA - Splendida in croce

2026 (Ada Music)

indie-rock, singer-songwriter

di Giuliano Delli Paoli

I can't feel free

I was never one of a kind

Set off on this long journey

I'm naked, I'm tired

There's an unprecedented light in the new songs by Candra. An almost blinding glow that signals rebirth, a desire to live without pretense, and above all the need to look back in order to grasp the best of what came before.

The singer-songwriter from Livorno returns after winning over pretty much everyone with “Bonola Boy”, his 2022 debut album, on which he lined up a series of emotional ordeals through a handful of songs halfway between indie rock and pure singer-songwriter fare.

For his second album, titled “Splendida in croce”, Candra lights up with a partly cryptic, veiled optimism, singing of long-awaited rains, everyday disasters he'd rather feel indifferent to, and nostalgia that inexorably sweeps everything away. New narratives given ad hoc emphasis by a rock epic quality as unusual for his standards as it is genuinely enveloping (“Torino”).

Candra thus gives us his travel diaries as he embraces a new life. Then, at a certain point, he pays tribute to Daniel Johnston, in an eponymous ballad that also evokes Death Cab For Cutie, notwithstanding a chorus whose melody reaches toward a sky still to be found.

It's in the alternation between more acoustic verses and sudden shifts of pace in the album's various refrains that Candra best conveys his restless moods (“Regalo cose”). The same happens when he pictures his own passing, metaphorized here as one last, Shakespearean embrace with his eternal beloved (“Le ossa di tutti”).

Non volerò nel cielo

Mi mangeranno i corvi

Mi ci porteranno loro

Non piangerò di meno

Ti adagerò sul velo

Del mare silenzioso

Tra la torre e il faro

E un'ultima volta

Ti saluterò

The sea, meanwhile, is one of the places Candra celebrates most, especially in the more pop, potentially radio-friendly tracks like “Luce”. There's no shortage, either, of darker moments, such as the four and a half minutes of “China”, yet another song dedicated to a lover cast as a cursed angel who is also, at the same time, a savior.

With “Splendida in croce”, Candra thus takes a further step forward, while still constantly looking back, specifically to his own time suspended between memories impossible to shake off and hopes not yet lost. The intent is, evidently, to exorcise it all in order to free himself from his troubles. What emerges is a reassuring postcard, made of songs that never slide into self-indulgence and manage to offer a surprisingly rosy vision.