Tananai Calmocobra – Review of the singer-songwriter's latest album

Tananaithe review of the new album, “Calmocobra“, edited by Alvise Salerno.

Imagine you are driving a motorcycle on a two-lane highway. Keep to the right and travel quickly but, at a certain point, you start to find queues both in your lane and in the overtaking lane.

It's difficult to overtake those in front of you but you take advantage of a space and succeed, immediately returning to the right. You start to accumulate a little delay on the schedule, not excessively, which forces you to revise your plans a little.

Having almost arrived at our destination, here's the traffic jam. You try in every way to get into the fast lane but there is always someone else coming and keeping you there, stuck.

You are increasingly late and so you decide to go all out, go all in: a risky and unnecessary manoeuvre, you overcome but risk an accident. You finally arrive at your destination but you are sweaty, still affected by the blow and not at all happy.

Here, now translate this image to the starting and ending points of Tananai. It starts from “Rave, Eclipse” and we arrive at “Calmocobra“. Departure with a bang, exciting and flawless. You put it in gear and go straight.

At a certain point a stop”to live lifea”, but up until then everything was ok. Then it comes”Poison” and here is the first traffic jam that slows everything down, but you manage to overtake and move forward. “Spiders” is the second block, with also some errors on the consecutio temporum by red pen (“I would have stopped, I would have broken his nose“).

“Calmocobra” is the completion of the journey. Torturous, full of thorns and not entirely satisfying.

Along the way there is also “Short Stories” but which, in fact, is a very short story that ends in the space of a summer where the greatest advantage was picking up a passenger along the way who knows the road well and who, all things considered, is what which kept the level of attention throughout the work high.

TANANAI CALMOCOBRA THE REVIEW

If we talk about Tananai and of this new album of his we cannot fail to consider the entire road traveled up to this moment but there is also another key to understanding it, which is that of the single listening experience.

Let's try to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who has never listened”Rave, Eclipse“, free from any past conditioning, and that is where we find the key.

Extrapolated from the total path, “Calmocobra” is a pop singer-songwriter album with its own great dignity, with light but effective lyrics. Love stories told simply, with clear images in the mind and eyes (“there was Italy-England in the bar“, cit. “Look What You've Done“) which return an adult and mature Alberto.

There is a desire to improve in singing and change in writing, it is clear, in addition to the desire to make everyone understand that “Not For Us” is definitively behind us, as are songs in the style of “Baby Goddamn” or “Pasta“.

Now there is “Vanilla“, there is “Punk Love History“, there is the almost old-time sadness of “No borders“, there are clear references to the writing of the fathers of itpop of 2016, there is the maturity of an almost thirty-year-old who seems to never want to look back.

You know what the problem is with “Calmocobra“? Perhaps we are not used to seeing and hearing Tananai in this slightly more glossy guise and we need time to fully understand it. A mentally diesel start, exactly like that of the first two singles from the project.

And so between the first path, where the path and the difference between an objectively complete and generational album and another well-made but very static one without particular twists and turns are analysed, and the second, where instead we start from scratch, there is a path of half?

Probably yes and it is the most obvious one: Tananai he went pop, he wants to do that and he's trying to do it to the best of his ability. Wishing him the best is the only thing to do. Without pretensions, exactly like “Calmocobra“.

Best songs: Poison, Punk Love Story
Worst songs: Ragni, Androne

TRACKLIST

1. MUD
2. BOOSTER
3. SPIDERS
4. PUNK LOVE HISTORY
5. ENTRANCE
6. VANILLA
7. LOOK WHAT YOU HAVE DONE
8. POISON
9. NO BORDERS
10. SHORT STORIES with ANNALISA
11. MARGHERITA PIZZA