gIANMARIA Monster review of a record that is a sea voyage at night

gIANMARIA Monster album review by Anna Ida Cortese

“I would like to give a hand to you who feel lost
I hope my words
may they be your new home” cit. from Popular – Monster

gIANMARIA offers us a story face to face with the listener. The image that comes to mind while listening to the album is borrowed from the Greek: Nekya. This word means sea voyage at night or descent into hell, an image that conveys the various facets of the individual and his depths. Descending into the abyss and then ascending again but lightly.

One year of work, ten songs to enter the world of this young songwriter whose talent we immediately recognized ad X Factor 2021.

Monster it could also be understood with the first person of the verb to show, therefore I show as if to say “I’ll tell you”an intimate narration that runs through stages of his awareness of listening to himself and to the other. Monster, however, also means a prodigy, a strangeness, a discomfort. But the monstrosity is to be understood in this case as revelation, a condition that includes great complexity.

The first thing that is evident from the first listening is that the lyrics are very intimate which would seem to go in contrast with decidedly rhythmic music and productions. A record that sounds very pop but scratches like rock. Sweet and bitter, smooth and rough at the same time.

The authorial skills in writing are evident and even the musical production almost always supports the text, his voice is that of the new generation, a muddy voice in which the sound does not always clearly define the word but conveys an emotion, a state of mind.

In this sea voyage at night we try to trace a path in the sounds and words of the unconscious…

gianmaria monster review

The first song that bears the title of the album, MONSTER, still unedited waiting to hear it at San Remo Festivalwe let it tell by gIANMARIA in our video interview.

“I am very happy that this is the Sanremo piece; it happened at random but it represents all the songs on the album to a certain extent, then go and specify the sub-topics with the other songs.”

So let’s start the real listening with THE CITY YOU HATE, the song that allowed him to snatch a ticket for the Festival. A song that is a reference to a new condition, a discovery of a new world and above all of growth and new goals.

And if we start this sound journey with questions about which cities we hate, it also comes to mind Calvin and hers Invisible Cities:

“You don’t enjoy the seven or seventy-seven wonders of a city, but the answer it gives to your question”

gIANMARIA he asks himself many questions, such as who will take care of him, who will try to console him, who will hug him… We find the answers in BEST FRIEND in which solitude also becomes necessary to understand and understand each other. Deal with the best part of you.

But then you also dig on the other side and in AFRAID OF ME the “negative” part returns. This album takes the listener into a game of Chinese boxes, overlapping and opposing topics.

We don’t just talk about individuality, in fact the figure of the other, let’s imagine a possible love presents itself in HEART, IF I’M ALONE, KEEP YOUR HANDS DOWNa two-dimensional dimension that is difficult to manage, three complex stories that speak of incommunicability and relationships that don’t work.

Deep down, however, there is also the hope of finding someone to cry out for ALL I’VE GOT. And here comes the song with the catchiest chorus on the record. A piece where, even if everything doesn’t go smoothly, the desire to dance and scream possesses you.

It’s towards the end of the album that what is without a doubt the best song on the album arrives, POPULAR.

A piece that is both antidote and poison in which all the bitterness flows and underlining it is also an obsessive sound. It is the song in which one wonders the deepest meaning of the universal language, popular to return to the true meaning of the word, a mantra that is repeated but it is not fame that one is looking for… but being understood and, at the same time , help to understand each other, to feel less alone.

And from here we increasingly observe the need to arrive at a sound, to distort the word, not to pronounce it in full. A mood that indicates only one thing: the need to communicate.

The disc closes with WILL. The title speaks clearly; an immaterial testament that tells of a residue, of what remains but also of those who leave. You wonder, after all, what do you want to let go and above all who do you have to let go. Go ahead, and that’s why despite the melancholy you hear a sweet note… it will be for that too Light That “makes others live“.

TOP SONGS: Popular – Testament
VOTE: 7 and 1/2 out of 10
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