I have always preferred normal pizzas. Smooth Margherita, without too many gastronomic derivatives. Even double mozzarella has never seduced me on a culinary level, and not even this musical transposition completely convinces me Dargen D'Amico.
The Sanremo parenthesis slipped away almost without friction: not due to a lack of thought, indeed, one of the few solid conceptual systems of the Festival, but rather due to a lukewarm reception that did not reward the wit nor the social tension of his writing.
“Doppia Mozzarella” was born from two years of work and presents itself as a layered reflective device. The title works as a threshold: ironic, immediate, but anything but light. The metaphor is explicit, almost didactic: excess as a systemic condition, accumulation as an automatic reflection of a saturated present. More than a concept, a lens through which to filter a series of heterogeneous flows that converge in a single perceptive field.
Inside we move between ballads and narrative fragments that bend to a further function: telling to translate, constructing images that allude to deeper emotional states. It is here that the album attempts its thrust, seeking an intimate dimension without giving up analytical tension.
Yet something is wrong. This “double mozzarella” which should amplify, paradoxically attenuates. It's not a sound problem: the record is refined, even elegant. Dargen knows where to intervene, how to shape the structures, how to distribute the weights. The thirteen tracks cross different territories, from lo-fi to urban, passing through folk suggestions and pop-rap openings, composing a mobile and technically solid mosaic.
The collective work is also evident: Marilena Montarone, Tommaso Ruggeri, Diego Maggi, Alberto Venturini, together with signatures such as Gianluigi Fazio, Edwyn Roberts and Marco Zangirolami, contribute to building a system rich in stratifications, where each song brings with it sedimentations of time and meaning.
But the sum does not generate vertigo. A sensation of distance remains, as if the accumulation of ideas, instead of exploding, were arranged on the surface.
The sound pizza is not bad: it is not one of those with little leavening and it is not even stringy and rubbery. It's just not really filling.
SCORE: SCORE 6.50
TO LISTEN NOW
Ottaviano – Stories – The elevator
TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY
44 minutes of music that flows lightly and never banal lyrics.
I would skip Shopping Centers right away.
