A room with crooked paintings, wildflowers on the floor and a chronic instability that continually seeks its breath.
One month after the release of the new album Animal shops (Pioggia Rossa Dischi), the singer-songwriter from Cesena Sandri is preparing to bring his visceral and at times alien imagery to the stage of the MI AMI Festival 2026, Saturday 23 May.
Between fragility, noise and the constant search for an emotional “home”, we had a chat with Michele Alessandri to explore the interior rooms and fascinating ambiguity of his latest work. Here's what he told us.
“Animalerie” seems more like a place than an album: if you were to describe the “inner room” in which it was born, what smells would we encounter? And who lives there besides you?
“Animalerie” is a room with crooked paintings on the walls and, on the floor and from the ceiling, flowers of every color and type; instead of the floor, more wild flowers. The smell of these and of the earth is therefore inevitable. Besides me and a glass of wine, there is a black cat, a chicken and many types of insects, on the flowers and underground. From a hole in the ceiling you can see the blue sky with a few clouds and, even there, I see a great variety of birds passing by.
Melancholy and distortion coexist on the album, like two sides of the same coin: is it a tension that you consciously pursue or something that inevitably emerges from your way of being in the world?
It is something that comes naturally to me, that is part of me and is inevitable: where there is chaos there is then release and breath, and where there is breath there is, in one way or another, a need to create chaos. I like that in the songs these two elements mix and then find their way to resolve themselves and stay together.
The question “what is home?” runs through the entire project: did you arrive at an answer while writing? And, more generally, what does the word “home” mean to you?
Home for me is the place where our body rests and is therefore completely exposed to any type of situation and totally helpless; therefore home must be a place of trust and peace.
In the songs everything seems to blur and mix: what does this ambiguity allow you that a more realistic story wouldn't be able to convey?
Ambiguity, in my opinion, is very interesting because it always recalls that combination of tension and release, of chaos and resolution. I like playing with it and I also think it goes hand in hand with my emotions.
You perceive a constant instability: have you ever felt the need to “solve”, or is it essential for you to leave emotions open?
I believe the instability derives from that tension we have already spoken about and for me it is fundamental, just as its resolution is fundamental. In “Animalerie”, as far as I'm concerned, there are various resolutions.
Compared to “Divertimenti”, what did you have to abandon – or break – to get to “Animalerie”?
Luckily I didn't have to abandon anything or break anything, because this record came very naturally and, at the same time, with a lot of urgency.
The singles “Bye Bye Samurai / Vite” and “Cose explosi” seem to anticipate the album's atmosphere well: what function do they have within the overall narrative?
“Bye Bye Samurai / Vite” is a song that represents well all the things we mentioned: the ambiguity, the instability, the tension, but also the release and resolution in the second part, “Vite”. “Cose explose”, on the other hand, is a slightly more focused, more airy song. In my opinion, these two singles gave us the opportunity to not understand anything about what the album would be and therefore to always return to the ambiguity, which however finds a resolution after listening to the entire work.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
