Baustelle

Voglio essere Gainsbourg

(from "Il musichiere 999")

The Nineties. Montepulciano, in the Tuscan countryside, a land rich in history, good wine, and young people trying to somehow get through those bare, identical days. In summer there might be a quick trip to the seaside, around Follonica, but Sundays spent studying and dutifully observing the holidays in the "chronic provinces" are deathly boring. Monotony is fended off by trying to catch the eye of the prettiest girl around, and one afternoon Francesco Bianconi really does land the score of a lifetime. Though not exactly in a romantic sense.

He has long been trying to connect the dots of an ambitious plan: to get his band project off the ground, a work in progress moving along slowly, clearly still missing something. Mutual friends bring a very young and extremely shy Rachele Bastreghi  along to an audition: she's very pretty, has a lovely voice, and plays guitar and piano too. The spark is immediate, an artistic love at first sight: she's exactly the personality missing to complete the picture, the female presence able to give new lift to Francesco's lyrics, now playable as a duet. Baustelle  are finally ready to present themselves to the world, and to think big...

Posso solo esistere/ In eterno vivere

Senza avere gli attimi/ Degli amanti giovani

(from "La canzone del parco")

Without Rachele's heartfelt delivery, a moving track like "La canzone del parco" would never have been the same. A song built from two contrasting sections: the first — colder, with that vocal line brilliantly broken up — describes the romantic situation of a young couple meeting up after school; in the second, embellished by a breathtaking crescendo, the scene is observed from the point of view of the surrounding nature, a tree in particular, which laments not being able to feel the same emotions, the same involvement, as the two lovers.

In the architecture of the songs Baustelle were working on at the time, Rachele mainly handled keyboards and backing vocals, but her voice also takes centre stage on "Gomma", a potential chart-topping single that captures with striking effectiveness the emotional chaos brought on by teenage love. "Vorrei scambiare i miei Le Ore con te" and "Avrei bisogno di scopare con te" are the first liberating outbursts of a songwriting style that would always manage to combine refined touches with more "vulgar" — or rather, "popular" — ones. "Gomma", like "La canzone del parco", would remain forever among Baustelle's most beloved songs, packed as it is with lines that ended up scrawled first in high-school students' diaries and then, a few years later, across the social media pages of half of Italy. Yes, Rachele turned out to be quite the addition.

I trembled a little with blue labor pains

And with pointless existence

I vibrated with vertigo

With lollipops and sugar

(from "Gomma")

"Il sussidiario illustrato della giovinezza", as one will already have gathered, is above all an album that reflects the typical itches of adolescence: Bianconi's writing builds, verse after verse, the erotic novel of the young Baustelle, kicking off with the blurred childhood memories recounted in "Le vacanze dell'ottantatre", where a plastically concise intro teleports the listener straight into the early '80s. Francesco, over a bossa nova rhythm, pictures himself as a boy at a seaside summer camp, watching the older kids, still without any malice. These are nostalgias temporally foreign to Bianconi's actual age at the time, but perfect for engaging a slice of the audience a few years older, who nostalgically relive the scenes evoked by the lyrics and that pleasant, languid music.

These are songs that leave a mark, the ones destined to end up in the "Sussidiario", taking off instantly thanks to effective melodies and killer choruses. Pop songs, at times aggressive, at times intensely romantic, drawing on a wide range of influences: from the exotica-tinged easy listening of the '60s to '90s britpop, passing through the school of Italian singer-songwriters and a light dusting of retro electro. A sensitive, visionary, at times bizarre style of writing, buoyed by a lightness that never tips into banality, which in the years to come would solidify into that refined, recognizable style through which Bianconi would earn esteem and authority as a songwriter, including work for other artists. Besides him, the sonic architect of the project is Fabrizio Massara, the friend obsessed with electronics, the sound manipulator capable of using his workstations to craft and stitch together an electro-pop outfit for Francesco's modern-chansonnier streak. An artistic idyll that would prove short-lived, but hugely rewarding, essential in paving the way for grafting pop architecture onto Francesco's lofty authorial ambitions.

Unorthodox, murky adolescence

Better than having to work in a factory

(from "Sadik")

Eroticism lurks everywhere: even when recounting the typical anti-modern provincial parent of those years, like the father depicted in "Sadik", who as a young man in the '60s devoured erotic comics. Eroticism consumed in the casual, fleeting, clandestine encounters of "Io e te nell'appartamento". Uncontainable eroticism in the body of "Martina", that urge to grow up which leads her into formative mistakes, wrong loves, unheard-of suffering following encounters engineered only to fight loneliness.

Francesco knows well the importance of choosing the right title, and "Sussidiario illustrato della giovinezza" proves to be the most evocative possible way to define a collection of ten crystal-clear snapshots of the adventurous, complicated period of adolescence. A brilliant intuition, the connecting thread for ten experiences arranged in sequence as if they were the screenplay of a film, pieces that reveal Bianconi's great love for cinema, highlighted by a multitude of references: Pietrangeli, Morricone, Dario Argento, Mario Bava, "La vita agra". There's even a track titled "Cinecittà", where Francesco goes to an audition, discovering to his great embarrassment that it's for a role in a (would you believe it) erotic film. This heavy-handed name-dropping would forever remain both the cross and the delight of Baustelle's poetics, oxygen for detractors unable to properly decode its scope and meaning: not merely an unguarded (and far from concealed) homage, but also a bold aesthetic goal to strive toward.

Encounters out of loneliness

Thick mascara for nakedness

Small catastrophes for intimate minutes

All this means digging deep

(from "Martina")

Francesco, like every kid of the '90s, loves both Seattle grunge and our own “alternative” rock scene—Marlene Kuntz, CSI, Afterhours, Diaframma—and all the bands who proved that rock music could be sung in Italian credibly, without sounding ridiculous. Claudio Brasini's guitar work, running through the already mentioned “Martina” (and also “Sadik”), paired with certain vocal inflections reminiscent of Cristiano Godano, meant that the early Baustelle were “accepted” not only by all the teenagers who felt perfectly represented by those songs, but also by a more “demanding” audience, one that doesn't see itself in the sales charts but seeks out its idols by digging through the less accessible corners of independent music.

After all, the youth described in “Sussidiario” isn't just romantic, witty and decadent—it also reveals a “murkier” side, approached sometimes with a “light” touch, as in “Noi bambine non abbiamo scelta,” and sometimes in a far more tormented, cursed-tinged way, as on the album's defining track, “La canzone del riformatorio,” the harrowing story of a boy who ends up behind bars after an act of violence against the girl he loves. Built on a melody that closely echoes Pulp's “Disco 2000,” the song reveals actions that can cause deep pain, leaving compromising after-effects and scars that never fully heal.

Love, in five years where will I go?

E tu chi sarai? E chi saremo noi?

(from “La canzone del riformatorio”)

Bianconi loves both the great pop-world composers, such as Burt Bacharach and Phil Spector, and the singer-songwriters of the latter half of the 20th century, especially Italian and French ones: Gainsbourg, Brassens, Brel, De André, Tenco, Battiato, Fossati. In his lyrics, partly autobiographical, he likes to talk about his own ambitions, in particular his wish to fashion himself into a modern chansonnier, drawing on the songwriters he admires: he speaks about this openly in “Il musichiere 999,” another track of real depth, both lyrically and musically, featuring one of the album's many excellent instrumental codas. Lines like “Voglio essere Gainsbourg” and “Il tabacco di De André” aren't afraid to lay out bold ambitions. Barely more than a kid, he already amused himself recording odd music onto cassette, imagining it could be used for the big screen; on the back cover of “Sussidiario” he even had printed the tender, prophetic line, “Baustelle è disponibile per colonne sonore.”

“Sussidiario” wouldn't yet turn Baustelle into nationally known figures—not just yet; for the time being they would remain a purely underground phenomenon, with few live shows under their belt and none particularly memorable, but it would sow seeds destined to bloom lushly very soon. Despite its almost underground, word-of-mouth distribution, it would still achieve modest success within the independent circuit, and as time passed it would cement its status as a cult record, winning over fans across generations. A debut, then, not without a few small naive touches, but one whose disregard for the trends of the moment would allow it to age remarkably well.

Il tabacco di De André

E una fica come te

(from “Il Musichiere 999”)

Produced by Amerigo Verardi for the small label Baracca&Burattini, whose limited production resources gave it a distinctly lo-fi sound, “Sussidiario” radiates the kind of delightful spontaneity capable of winning over not just listeners but also plenty of critics and industry insiders, earning the title of “Best Debut of the Year” from the specialist magazine Il Mucchio Selvaggio. The album would quickly go out of print, becoming impossible to find until November 2010, when it was finally reissued. Alongside the CD edition, identical to the original, a lavish limited-edition commemorative box set was produced—highly sought-after today—titled “Cofanetto illustrato della giovinezza,” with artwork by Alessandro Baronciani. The box, besides the CD and—for the first time—vinyl editions, includes a 10" featuring a demo tape from 1996, with five tracks including the previously unreleased “I ragazzi venuti dallo spazio” and “Nouvelle Vague,” a 7" with newly rearranged versions of “Gomma” (accompanied by a new music video) and “La canzone del parco,” plus a 24-page booklet packed with photos and illustrations.

For the occasion, a celebratory tour was put together, filling the gap between “I mistici dell'Occidente” and “Fantasma”: a lighter interlude between Baustelle's two most cerebral and complex projects. After “Fantasma” came a return to sparkling pop, with the two volumes of “L'amore e la violenza.” A constant shifting of register that would become the cornerstone of Francesco Bianconi's artistic expression, one of the most sensitive, talented and beloved singer-songwriters of his generation. And not only that…

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22/11/2020