An unusual return, that of Perturbazione, four years after their last album of unreleased songs. Unusual because it is a live performance from almost fifteen years ago that draws from other people's music, but also unusual because it recalls a period in which Perturbazione were something different than now. For example, there were still Gigi Giancursi (guitar) and Elena Diana (cello), who left the band after the Sanremo experience, which represents an ideal watershed in the discography of the Rivoli band.
In this 2010 concert, which pays homage to one of Fabrizio De André's most popular albums, you can still hear the intricate textures of clear guitars – in Belle and Sebastian style – which characterized the first three Perturbazione albums, just as you can still hear the warm cello by Elena Diana. Elements that bring the clock back almost fifteen years, when “Del nostra tempo rubato” had just been released and Perturbazione, in a special event at the Civic Theater of Varallo Sesia (Vercelli), decided – on the initiative of the Holden School and the musicologist Alberto Jona – to reinterpret “La Buona Novella”, forty years after its release. To embellish the concert, the interventions of the actress Paola Roman and the testimony of Don Scaciga, the very man who at the end of the 1960s introduced De André to the apocryphal gospels, a clear source of inspiration for the “anarchist Christianity” of La Buona Novella.
Having overcome the reverential fear for a figure towards whom a sometimes even slightly dogmatic cult is directed – as the singer of Perturbazione himself, Tommaso Cerasuolo, declared – the Piedmontese band has found the courage to publish a live album that mirrors the 1969 album, which respects there tracklist of the original and stages a reinterpretation aimed not so much at distorting the work, but more at shaping it so as not to distort the characteristics of the band. Everything is seasoned with the substantial contribution of Nada and Alessandro Raina (Amor Fou), the latter involved in “The Return of Joseph”, “Via della Croce” and “The Testament of Titus”.
Cross and delight, to be honest, the presence of Nada, who on the one hand with her unmistakable voice makes the desert, medieval and Middle Eastern atmosphere of the percussive “Maria in the carpenter's shop” vibrate, on the other hand reveals more of an uncertainty in singing the melody and verses of “Il testamento di Tito”, characterized by an intense performance and embellished by Dario Mimmo's evocative accordion.
Stripped of the anachronistic progressive-rock trappings, the final “Laudate hominem” is probably the song on which Perturbazione have applied a more massive intervention, transmitting to the spectators a crescendo that closes the live performance, probably reaching the highest peak of the evening.
A record that essentially neither adds nor subtracts anything from Perturbazione's discography, but which, considering its peculiarity, can legitimately attract the curiosity of fans of the Piedmontese band and those, why not, of the Genoese singer-songwriter.
11/05/2024
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM