Available on all major streaming and download platforms from Friday 12 June for Artist First, God Protect You is the debut album of CigarettewestLigurian singer-songwriter who has made autobiographical writing and expressive freedom the heart of his artistic research.
And so the album was born precisely from the urgency of telling life without filters, chasing a single certainty: that of the song. In fact, however Cigarettewest music does not simply represent a means of expression, but rather a place of truth: “The song is tangible. The song is the truth. That's all there is.”
And of songs in God Protect You there are ten of them. Despite this, the album presents itself as a unitary story, built through different but closely connected stories. The loves that are born thus leave room for those that end, while melancholy embraces the memory of adolescence and loneliness chats with the Milanese nightlife. All after returning to their roots.
Effectively, the album looks simultaneously at both the past and the futurebuilding a narrative universe in which they coexist personal experiences And universal images: from animals of the night to the desire to belong, passing through alcohol, sex, money, addiction, doubt and the need to imagine the future.
From a sound point of view, however, the work escapes any rigid definition. In fact, acoustic, classical and electric guitars coexist with pianos, wurlitzers, synthesizers and violins, supported by acoustic drums and percussion, while the arrangements develop as a natural extension of the meeting between text and melody.
Cigarettewest, “Dio Ti Protegga”: the title of the new album
The album's title comes from a personal experience that profoundly marked the singer-songwriter's creative path.
“The title is engraved on a necklace that I wear around my neck. In the apartment where I lived in Milan, while I was writing 'The Image', I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was a frightening and otherworldly experience. In the following days I told my mother everything. He told me it was my grandfather Enzo.
In that moment I felt his protection and I perceived myself close to something bigger than myself. I understood that this was my path: resist, continue, fight. That's when the album title was born. Shortly after I started writing all the other songs that make up it today.”
