WORLD
BY DAVID HUTCHEON
Vinicio Capossela
★★★★
Tredici Canzoni Urgenti
WARNER MUSIC ITALY. CD/DL/LP
Thirteen urgent songs, written in response to events at home and abroad.
Capossela’s masterful 2016 album, Canzoni Della Cupa, was a quadruple set warning of the dangers that lurked in the darkness on the edge of town, a people’s history that made Number 1 in the Italian charts – but was anyone paying attention? Written in despair and anger after the Italian Senate rejected a bill against hate crimes, as wars both cultural and literal swept the globe, Tredici Canzoni Urgenti takes its cues from Brecht, Goethe, Kant and a child’s ability to dance on the inside. Musically, it’s the most expansive of its author’s lengthy career and, after a period focusing on music and tales from Italy’s much-depleted rural hinterland, there is the welcome return of Capossela’s admiration for the Italian migrant who shaped the West: Marc Ribot, Greg Cohen and John Convertino bring both prairie dust and neon lights to the table.