Cristiano Godano returns with “Un filo d’erba nel muro”, his third solo album made with Rob Ellis, already working with Marlene Kuntz.
And while Marlene Kuntz feel the need to retrace their steps, bringing back to the stage the songs of “Catartica” first, and of “Il Vile” then, Cristiano Godano moves in parallel along his very personal trajectory
Here too, however, we draw some cards from the past: an old acquaintance who also has something to do with Marlene Kuntz, Rob Ellis, producer and multi-instrumentalist who had already worked with the band for “Senza Peso” in 2003 and who returns to collaborate with the singer-songwriter for his third solo album.
However, it is not the past that weaves the plot of the songs of “Un filo d’erba nel muro” – this is the name of the album – but an unscrupulous and disarming, uncertain and dangerous current situation in which none of us can any longer have control. Godano, in fact, has often expressed himself in a radical way on some topics including the environment, the deadly impact of social networks, and AI. The blade of grass that gives the album its title, capable in its fragility of making its way through the cracks of a wall, is nature reclaiming its power, the act of resistance against a system that sees each of us increasingly subjected to the mechanisms of an algorithm that locks us in our safe bubbles, deluding ourselves into offering shelter. A beautiful image that does justice to the entire lyrical section of the album, where Godano’s refined pen insinuates itself between the mediocrity and inconsistency of the too many words that today disguise music, social media, the media, the world: a planet full of overused vocabulary, redundant speeches rich in words but devoid of sense, which have the sole purpose of distracting, enchanting, sedating.
Godano is all too aware of this, so much so that he travels the tortuous road that is currently for any artist who chooses to free himself from the dominant logic to continue making music in a coherent way, out of pure love. Anyone who lived through the Nineties musically knows this: today it is unthinkable to rediscover that ferment that developed in Italy following the trail of grunge, in which there was, yes, the commercial part, but also ample space for a sound that did not aim at visibility and mass numbers, but rather at hitting those who were able to understand that music because it was made of a shared language
Godano is critical, but not disillusioned, and if the space has become a thin crack from which to peep out, like the blade of grass in the wall, then that is where it will creep in. And not without a glimmer of hope, perhaps permeated by a certain exasperation and for this reason the doubt arises that it is irony (“Don’t worry anymore that everything will be resolved. And don’t apologize, no, relax if you can, calm down and be heartened by my heart that will take care of you”, he sings in “Tomorrow”). Ice is growing in the streets and I’m about to freeze, but we will be alive, we will never go out.”,”Gabbia” is instead a suffocating song, because it insists on placing everyone before the fait accompli of resignation (“You accept the cage as it is and absorb your captivity without asking yourself why”). “Vento dei dream” tells the dull and grotesque utopia of salvation (is it possible that it is only made of “sugar clouds”?) “Valori”, the second single from the album, however, seems to bring us back down to earth: a list that is marked in an almost mechanical way, accompanied by rhythmic sounds that they bring out the banality and inconsistency with which these values are now treated, like a shopping list.
“A blade of grass in the wall” is a reflection on the inevitable evil of the present but for those who can see it, also an invitation not to succumb despite adversity. These are dark, grey, unscratchable times like a wall, and yet “Evil is coming, you will disperse it with your radiance. My spirit would like everything about you now. To be in you, my beneficial abode. Let it pervade you”. Almost an invitation to let yourself be enveloped by the immensity of our mother earth, which is order, beauty, peace.
TO LISTEN NOW
Values – Ice – Let yourself be pervaded
TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY
Whatever Spotify’s algorithm tells us next
SCORE: 8.00
TRACKLIST
Look at me
Tomorrow
Joy
In the dark
Ice
The cage
Wind of dreams
Alter ego
Values
Facts pervade
