POLLIO - Dopo la bomba

It had been quite a while since we'd heard from Milanese singer-songwriter Fabrizio Pollio (b. 1984), known simply as Pollio. Ten whole years have passed since his first solo work "Humus", and twelve since his last release with Io?Drama, the indie-rock band he fronted for a decade.

It's not out of some petty obsession with dates that we point out his last output came from a Pollio barely thirty years old, while these new songs come from the pen and voice of a forty-year-old. A forty-year-old, though, still full of colour, tenderness and fragility. Even in your forties, these six new songs teach us across twenty-one tender minutes of music, you never stop growing, changing, being afraid, or facing a stranger in the mirror each morning (as in the bittersweet opener "E' solo una fase").

Listening to Pollio's soft voice is a pleasure, whether it's drifting along to the dictates of good old itpop ("La percentuale"), or rippling romantic and hoarse in pursuit of the shadow of Luca Carboni ("Mi sei mancata tanto"). It's just as fun to lose yourself in his wordplay, learned not so much from Calcutta as directly from Gianni Rodari (again on "La percentuale").

Against a delightful "Equatore" that shakes up Francesco Di Bella, Tiromancino and an Morricone-esque whistle, the more conventional "Quand'ero vecchio" strings together less engaging ideas and turns out to be the least interesting track of the bunch.

Before the eccentric closer titled "Igloo", there's still time for the euphoric chorus of "Lucciole" and other gusts of tenderness.

Pollio's voice and stories feel so familiar that it's hard to believe they've been absent for ten years - or that you'd never heard them before. Given the urgency, the inventiveness and the pleasant unevenness of the arrangements (credit also due to the guitar imagination of Giuseppe Magnelli - Grenouille), it's a shame the Milanese singer-songwriter had so few minutes of music left in the drawer. A forgivable shame, only if we don't have to wait until his fifties for more.

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22/02/2026