With “The Walnut Tree” BRUNORI SAS returns to the earth, pruning and subtracting – Rockon.it

Article by Marzia Picciano

Dario Brunori it's one stand up comedian missed, is what we say to ourselves today as we prepare for the artist's press conference a Milan de “The Walnut Tree(Island Records), and we watch him wander around the room during the refreshments. The problem, for me, is that Brunori is a very good singer-songwriter, one of those who makes you cry bitterly, so we are here laughing at his irony while we sense that this album, out in February, will Sanremo (and with all its damned hype), it will be just as the cardboard note left on the tables where we are crouched suggests: a valley of tears.

Brunori returns with great momentum, exactly five years since the Platinum Record Cheep!announcing a date at Circus Maximus (The June 18, 2025complete with orchestra – tickets on sale at this link > https://tidd.ly/4gAKDtB) a record that was “between air and earth”, he says, and with a participation in the 75th edition of the Sanremo festival with the song of the same name from his new work – new so to speak, he's been working on it for two years, two years of “subtractions”.

The Walnut Tree, this real presence (the tree in front of his window to which he finally pays a tribute) yet almost metaphysical (and heavy, like a thought that one cannot get rid of) coming from the illustrator's pen Robert Figlia which stands out blue against the yellow background and on Brunori himself, represents for Dario the realization of a need, of “a record that returned to earth“. But which land?

Let's try to ask ourselves another question. What has changed since that Brunori who sang “Paolo doesn't know who he will vote for/He only knows that he wants a wife/To heat up his soup for dinner” to “Do you want to have a baby or will I do it?/If you like I can do it like a god/Or would you like me to be your father”? Why Tyson's Biteproduced together with Dimartino (and you can hear it) is it a song that, beyond the more rock and electronic component, tells us about a different Brunori?

The Brunori who talks about the walnut tree is the master of a dualism that he has always carried with him, that of the sly smile over a truth that always leaves us halfway. And with fatherhood this feeling grew out of all proportion. What is a song, still shrouded in pre-Sanremo mystery, which he wrote in one go in one night, on Easter Saturday, because he felt lighter responds to two fears, the one that comes from a culture that does not teach or accustom us to be happy and that, as a father, of falling into the temptation of showing his daughter only the lights. In short, despite the slight happiness that our hero shows as an approach to life, today Brunori gives us a job “permeated with joy and great anxieties”.

It's difficult to talk about an album that we haven't listened to yet (or rather, of which we only know three pieces), but Brunori is didactic, he also has the presentation (we were missing a Power Point), the pointer, he tells us about him, about his company farm in San Fili where he ended up writing the album, and how in the end he manages to talk about everyone, singing in images and about the enormous challenge he faced: that of probing his soul, in a happy moment for him, which became even happier with the birth of daughter, to put aside “everything that appeared superfluous, or already said (…) to give space and weight to the most heartfelt episodes”. This analytical work, as he calls it, was carried out with a soul prober, Riccardo Sinigallia.

“Richard” he says “he convinced me to pull down the rug. He told me: let's go with courage. We move towards urgency and necessity, of moving beyond the idea of ​​writing songs to writing songs”. In short, to do something authentic, to “do not make an apology for the truth”. Indeed, to look at one's own hypocrisies and inconsistencies. “To fight something you have to understand it even if it bothers you”, which is what the artist must do: “face and live and face the things about yourself that disturb you”.

However, always with the hope that it will be transversal. “I looked for a type of story that would also appeal to my grandchildren who listen to Kid Yugi's trap, for an album that wants to convey a theme of regenerationand” he says, a theme dear to Sinigallia, whose enormous work he recognizes so much as to consider his role as producer reductive, “but not revolution, because that wouldn't be up my alley”. For Brunori, The Walnut Tree is aa hymn to the moderates but in the most extreme way possible”.

The imperative was not to repeat ourselves, not even in live performances, seeking variation between tour dates signed VIVO concerts. Going outside your comfort zone. Stay dry. And even more difficult, yestry not to give a moral, not to give the result, the right interpretation, let the listener decide what they feel. His truth. Of the three pieces he makes us listen to, there is a ballad in full Brunori style, So as not to lose us, one (and not the only) live recording from a telephone, Catastrophic afternoons (a technical choice that he and Sinigallia carried out to create what must be a record of moments of soul, rather than images) and the return to the metalhead electric guitar of More Water Than Fire. But there is also a piece in Calabrian dialect, a moment of emotion, there is so much more. If this wasn't the year for Sanremo, when?

More reasons to confirm that he will be my captain at Fanta Sanremo, something I had already decided as soon as I saw the names on the bill. Even if he bets on Lucio Corsi, a true poet, because he is “there is one who doesn't do it” and is confident in a Sanremo that features songs lasting a minute and a half (and with thirty singers this year it will be like watching the Oscars live). In the meantime, let's prepare the Kleenex and wait for the ones branded by Brunori, because no matter what, it always makes us cry, for better or for worse. Even with a nut tree.

The Walnut Tree is out on February 14 For Island Records and available now for pre-order and pre-save. The new album will be the protagonist of a tour consisting of 8 dates scheduled for March in the V stadiumsigevano, Florence, Rome, Turin, Naples, Bologna and a double date of Milan at the Unipol Forum. After the sports halls, Brunori Sas Live With Orchestrawill arrive for the first time at Circus Maximus of Rome, the June 18, 2025.

TRACKLIST – The Walnut Tree

1. So as not to lose us
2. The nut tree
3. The guillotine
4. Life as it is
5. Catastrophic afternoons
6. Tyson's bite
7. Fin'ara luna
8. More water than fire
9. Black Moon
10. Security guard

BRUNORI SAS – Tour 2025

Tickets on sale at this link > https://tidd.ly/4gAKDtB

Live with Orchestra
Wednesday 18 June 2025 || Rome @ Circus Maximus

Tours in the arenas
Friday 14 March 2025 || They lived (PV) @ PalaElachem
Sunday 16 March 2025 || Florence @ Nelson Mandela Forum
Wednesday 19 March 2025 || Rome @ Palazzo dello Sport – SOLD OUT
Saturday 22 March 2025 || Turin @ Inalpi Arena
Wednesday 26 March 2025 || Naples @ PalaPartenope
Friday 28 March 2025 || Casalecchio di Reno (BO) @ Unipol Arena
Sunday 30 March 2025 || Assago (MI) @ Unipol Forum
Monday 31 March 2025 || Assago (MI) @ Unipol Forum