(3 / 5)
Italian music CDs are like buses! None at all on the horizon and then no less than four come along at once! World music at its best from Europe. A quartet of excellent albums have dropped on to the editor’s desk recently, and offered up four very different Italian artists.
Paolo Conte, Tiziano Ferro, Jovanotti and this one; Cesare Cremonini and “Possibili Scenari”, a 10-track offering which is the singer-songwriter and actor’s 10th studio album. The album’s release on 15th December, was preceded by a number one single in Italy, “Poetica” which appears here in slot number three.
37-year-old Cesare was the lead singer in the very successful Italian bad Lunapop, selling more than one and a half million albums between 1999, and when they packed it in, back in 2002. Then he went solo.
His Lunapop band mate, Nicola “Ballo” Balestri has joined him in his new band. The singer’s biggest solo hits include “Vieni a vedere perche”, “Latin Lover”, “Gongi-Boy”, “Marmellata #25”, “Dicono di me” and “Figlio di un re”.
He has released four solo albums : “Bagus”, “Magese”, “1+8+24” and “II primo bacio sulla Luna”. There is an additional “special edition” version of Bagus with a DVD containing extra bonus and music videos. His album Maggese was partly recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London.
He has been nominated for and won many awards, inclucing an MTV Europe Music Award nomination for Best Italian Act, in 2012. His status is big enough to fill huge stadiums when he tours, and he will do just that in June 2018, with stadium shows in Milan, Rome and Bologna among other cities.
The press blurb sent with this album made me smile, when I read that this is an album “full of Dopamine and Serotonin: the ingredients of happiness!” I get that these days at my age – manly from a nap, beer, a decent meal, seeing my footie team win more often than lose – and a spot of sunshine now and again!
The new album is produced by Walter Mameli, recorded in Bologna and mixed between Metropolis Studios in London and MHB in New York. 10 new songs penned and arranged by Cesare, Alessandro Magnagnini and Davide Petrella. The material took the guys two years to write.
By Graham Crompton
(1 / 5) ‘Dull Zone’
(2 / 5) ‘OK Zone’ (3 / 5) ‘Decent Zone’
(4 / 5) ‘Super Zone’
(5 / 5) ‘Awesome Zone’
