Bluvertigo - Morgan

Today it's too early to be able to appreciate these composers, and not because they're avant-garde; on the contrary, they are artists perfectly in step with our era, artists who truly express our times. But the prejudices to which so-called popular music is subjected, and the overvaluation of composers of the past, with the consequent undervaluation of those of the present, are issues that have recurred in the same way in every century

("Tecnica mista su tappeto", Franco Battiato, Franco Pulcini, EDT, 1992)

What is the present, by now, if not an unbroken feed of snapshots and ideas from the past, one that prevents any serious examination of today and, at the same time, any imagining of a tomorrow that breaks with it.

These past weeks have brought yet another sad squabble made for social media consumption between Manuel Agnelli and Marco "Morgan" Castoldi over X-Factor and which of the two was the more innovative judge on that wretched TV show. If this strikes you as the ridiculous thing it actually is, know that there's no escaping this center that has swallowed up its own edges: for almost all listeners and industry insiders today, making music amounts to taking a public stance on such matters, disguised as a considered opinion on artistic careers and albums – wholly twentieth-century concepts, ill-suited to capturing the spirit of our time. Add to this global trend a local one: in a country where the underground musicians of Generation X, for lack of vision, tools or interest, failed to build a viable alternative to the mainstream – as Umberto Palazzo, with obvious authority on the subject, pointed out a few years back, writing about the Sanremo Festival, which by now is indistinguishable from the May Day Concert or any other talent show.

A shame, though.

There was a time, the last one before mass Internet, when flamboyant personalities like Agnelli and Castoldi seemed capable of turning everything they touched to gold: the former, for his skill in translating North American alt-rock's sonic imagination into our language and into scorching slogans; the latter, for the breadth of vision and of the models – not only musical ones – he could draw on to create, first with his Bluvertigo, and later for a while on his own, a world of erudite references that he communicated with extraordinary ease. What's more: such talents didn't just seem to foreshadow brilliant careers for themselves, but also a promise of liberation from our tragic "nazionalpopolare" culture. It didn't turn out that way: that golden age ended quickly, a good two decades have passed since then, and some of its protagonists have in turn become known to the general public for reasons entirely unrelated to their music. What remains, though, are unforgettable works, which it's now time to rescue from mythology without deluding ourselves that they're still zeitgeist: "Metallo non metallo" by Bluvertigo, for one, is an absolute classic that doesn't deserve the kind of sharp, dismissive takes that focus on the decline of the man who wrote it.

The middle chapter of the "Trilogia Chimica", opened two years earlier with "Acidi e basi" and closed out before the end of the millennium – along with the band's entire studio discography – with "Zero", "Metallo non metallo" came out in 1997 and stands as the band's commercial and creative peak. A quartet of twenty-five-year-olds – Morgan (vocals, bass, piano, keyboards, synthesizer), Andy (co-founder, keyboards, synthesizer, sax, vocals, backing vocals), Sergio Carnevale (drums), Livio Magnini (guitar, in addition to/replacing Marco Pancaldi) – who reach full compositional and performing maturity on their second attempt: it's across these fifteen tracks that the Bluvertigo formula clicks into place, moving from the debut's still fairly traditional, if neurotic and sensual, electric assault to what, at the risk of oversimplifying, we might call a nineties, playfully intellectualized reworking of Battiato/Bowie/Gore stylistic tropes. But there's a fluorescent world teeming within these seventy minutes, a sprawling tracklist that could only have been born in the golden age of the compact disc; Morgan, a leader whose charisma is matched only by his instability, writes and arranges practically everything.

"Il mio malditesta" opens in seeming continuity with the recent past. The chord progression of the intro – Seattle, scrubbed clean – returns in a chorus of unusual catchiness, but already the verse spirals down into a whirl of rhythmic syncopation and funk bass – and, I'll add, grotesque outbursts from a poorly digested classical education: "Però Giove ha cagato fuori Minerva da un'emicrania" ("But Jupiter shat out Minerva from a migraine"). Next comes "Fuori dal tempo", a singularly successful single from a decade in which the market still lacked the means to occupy every corner of the imaginable, nor perhaps did it even dream of being able to. Equally enjoyable and disarming for both the alternative crowd and MTV's mid-afternoon audience – thanks to its ironic attitude, the dance moves and gaudy colors of the video, and the processed guitars underpinning a dissonant electro-pop – "Fuori dal tempo" is a sarcastic smirk baring its teeth at convention with evident satisfaction ("I can't voice my strange thoughts/ I can't hate freely/ even though sometimes I'd have good reason to"); honorable mention goes to the string arrangement conducted by Lucio Fabbri, one last, anthology-worthy six minutes of strangeness.

Elusive mood swings: "Vertigoblu" is noise-funk, guitars in the Belew/Fripp school, with lyrics that unspool the author's recurring obsessions – school and its bleak, inadequate curricula; cities crowded with standardized people; even a punk spit of bile, just ten seconds or so, aimed at fellow artists who wave sincerity like a flag, as if that were excuse enough to redeem insufficient Art. "Cieli neri", on the other hand, is delicate psychedelia graced by a performance of great charm and a chorus steeped in dark romanticism – it's hard to find, in our rock canon, an account of an ending this lyrical: "I have memories locked inside you/ sadness inside me/ between two hands, mine/ are the black skies that, I know/ will never melt again".

Too much grace all at once in this quartet of songs, and it's only natural that the bar drops a little for what follows, from "Oggi hai parlato troppo" – hard-charged funk, an almost textbook crossover for the era, if not for lyrics still provocative by design – to "Il nucleo" – which boasts the emphasis and melodic quality of "Zero", but not yet that illuminating, prophetic production that will make every instrument sound like a string of 0s and 1s, a kind of pop written and delivered in machine code.

"Ebbrezza totale" is an unjustly underrated gem, a pop ballad with the melodic grandeur once again of Berlin-era Bowie filtered through "Zooropa"-tinted lenses. Sketch it out and you'd draw a bell curve: intro and outro for solo piano and interference; the first and last sections split between a clean guitar and one left in feedback; the central section in distortion, without ever quite arriving at a proper chorus. It's the perfect appetizer for the other pop peak of "Metallo non metallo", a hammering Depeche-style obsession with the added value of Mauro Pagani's bouzouki and, in the refrain, a disco guitar: "Altre forme di vita", its lyrics committed to memory by a couple of generations of listeners, replays on a smaller scale the spell that the Franco Battiato of "His Master's Voice" had cast over entire coastlines of Italians in swimsuits, suntan lotion and Fininvest a decade and a half earlier.

Naturally, having reached such heights, one could do without a less biting funk number ("(Le arti dei) miscugli") and, conversely, an unbridled rock'n'roll rampage ("So Low – L'eremita"), but the wonders aren't over yet.

Enter "Ideaplatonica", electro-acoustic – complete with an almost improvised, piano-driven final drama – that anticipates and surpasses dEUS's "The Ideal Crash", which would arrive in these parts at least a year later; but it's the lyrics that once again mark the distance between Castoldi and his contemporaries. Think of the affectations of a young Godano, try listening to them again today and then set them alongside a text like this one; there you'll find a heartfelt but precisely datable performance, here a palpable emotion indifferent to time, and deliberately disjointed word choices ("oltremodo", "decisamente") mixed with flashes of graphic realism – "anche per quest'anno rinuncio al suicidio" ("this year too I'll pass on suicide") is a blade that comes out of nowhere, chills the blood, and vanishes back into nowhere.

And finally, here's "Troppe emozioni", a procession of minimal yet powerful gestures, a twin to the "Punto di non arrivo" that will close "Zero": a mirage in a cold, stone-gray desert, like the impossible yearning for impassivity sung about in the lyrics ("Whoever has suffered harm is dangerous/ endures everything/ too many emotions make you numb"). The bass is imposing, the guitar riff hypnotic, Alice – yet another guest of note who's content with a discreet presence, like certain big-name actors given just a few lines in Malick's films – accompanies without words the abyssal depth of Morgan and Andy's vocal lines.

All the technology of the Nineties with the glitter of the Eighties and the ambition of the Seventies, "Metallo non metallo" is the album that establishes the trajectory of the Bluvertigo as the most interesting and innovative of the turn of the millennium, at least within their own frame of reference - that of an idea of pop that's accessible and colourful, yet meticulously detailed, stimulating, and boundless. Above all, it's the work that qualifies Morgan as the greatest talent of his generation - "a true storyteller, a stage presence perfectly capable of enticing the viewer to approach new worlds, his worlds", as Giulia Cavaliere excellently writes - still able, having reached a plateau of inspiration, to deliver two more classics of comparable stature: the never-sufficiently-reappraised "Zero" and, finally on his own, the lush world of "Canzoni dell'appartamento", now an adult in its own right but still capable, to this day, of leaving jaws dropped and eyes wide, much like the old folks of the little Calabrian village gathered around a black-and-white television set in Michelangelo Frammartino's "Il buco", watching the economic-miracle Milan blossom before their eyes - a forty-year delay, yes, but every bit as alive and moving.

Then, slowly, increasingly forgettable outings followed, right down to the current meme-driven drift mentioned at the outset, in rather good company, mind you. But that's what happens even to the purest talent, if left to derail: it happens, it has happened, it crumbles, and that's that.

The little story that roads are made to lead somewhere is just a trick to seduce human beings with the idea of progress. Roads are made for getting lost, and I, as I've said, believe in chaos: I deeply believe in its creative potential, but every time you don't make a choice, the situation becomes exponentially more unmanageable. Until things degenerate, and you find yourself facing a single howling mass of possibilities tangled inextricably with one another, a mass that looms over you and threatens to swallow you whole. And I, however much I might delude myself in moments of self-exaltation, am not God - that is, I'm not Bach.

("Il libro di Morgan. Io, l'amore, la musica, gli stronzi e Dio", Marco Castoldi, Einaudi, 2014)

(Some concepts are drawn from an article by the author for SALT Editions, which we thank for their kind permission)

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03/10/2021