Songs That Aren’t Sung. Cremonini and his return to innocence

London. On Tuesday 20 October, at the Shepherd’s Bush Underground station exit, London speaks Italian. On the façade of the O2 Empire, the slightly crooked letters on the billboard announce, with the solemnity of London’s old theatres: ‘Cremonini. One Night in London. Sold Out’. Greats have graced this stage: the Rolling Stones, Amy Winehouse, Oasis, Adele. And the tradition continues with someone who, instead, wants to make himself small in order to rediscover himself. Cesare Cremonini presents Amateur, his new album of previously unreleased tracks, recorded between London and Bologna (released today, ed.). After twenty-seven years spent becoming a successful professional, the Bolognese singer-songwriter seems to want to return, first and foremost, to being a lover of music.

Queuing to get in are us, the forty-somethings who used to listen to Lùnapop on Walkmans and drink Coca-Cola instead of matcha, like a well-behaved crowd of guests at a 45th birthday party, inside a Victorian theatre draped in red velvet. Red, but also gold: the giant skull at the centre of the set, the piano, the microphones, even the little bottles. The musicians take to the stage. SIG (mund Freud) is there too, the multi-instrumentalist who plays throughout the concert with his face covered by a golden skull. Then he arrives: the master of this rock ceremony, in a leather jacket and with a cane featuring a white knob, in the style of Domenico Modugno in Il Vecchio Frack. They begin with the track that gives the album its title. Salmo takes to the stage, greeted by a Sardinian flag waving in the front rows. “You’re much warmer than a stadium,” says Cremonini. And indeed, we are a miniature stadium: two thousand people, enthusiasm condensed into a theatre that sounds all the louder precisely because the walls trap sounds and emotions rather than letting them escape.

Amateur is, in his own words, the album of firsts: “It’s the first time I’ve performed an album live where there aren’t any famous songs to sing along to with the audience”. Why London? Because nobody knows him here, he says, because success is an accident and the gift he seeks is freedom, a respite from his own name. Said in a hall full of Italians shouting his name. On stage is a star who, with great self-awareness, is staging his return to innocence. Behind this London night, however, lies a machine that is anything but amateurish. Universal, Mastercard, Live Nation, music journalists who’ve travelled from Italy, a documentary for Sky. Could all this have happened if Cremonini hadn’t been Cremonini? What is the cost, in terms of the success already achieved, of the privilege of feeling like a stranger again?

The paradox does not make the desire for freedom any less genuine; if anything, it makes it more interesting. Amateur is an experimental album. Rock, progressive detours, ballads, unexpected harmonies, a lack of choruses: it is an album of songs that are not meant to be sung – neither in the shower nor elsewhere – but which should be listened to and listened to again to pick up on new details each time. There are notable collaborations (Salmo, Fabri Fibra, Malika Ayane, Elisa, Morgan). And yet, from a musical point of view, Cremonini seems to have allowed himself the luxury of not worrying too much about expectations. But the truth of this record lies above all in the sounds. It is music made with instruments, with the fingers, the vocal cords and the breath. Lots of breath. There is the saxophone of Donny McCaslin, the American musician who accompanied David Bowie on his final album, Blackstar, and who in Disturbo mentale plays with the fury of a punk bagpipe; and there is Cremonini’s own saxophone, which he has been studying obsessively for about a year, six to seven hours a day: the instrument as an extension of himself, almost a way of breathing more deeply. And then there’s the poetry. To the strains of "Cavalli da corsa", Cremonini dances a waltz alone, his eyes dreamy, the golden microphone in his left hand and his right hand leading an imaginary partner. Music, one might say.

It is an album that defies the algorithm and even embraces the idea of commercial failure: an emancipation from success which, however, only those who have been successful can afford. Meanwhile, at this celebration of success that defies success, everyone is having a raucous good time. The quintessentially Italian cameraman sings along to every song from beneath his thick moustache, like a friend filming you at karaoke. Beers are handed out to the audience from the stage before the interval, and greetings are exchanged with family, long-standing friends and familiar faces among the guests. Cesare, introducing the six English wind players in English, gets tongue-tied and stumbles over a few words: “This Bolognese ‘s’ that creeps into everything, it makes everything plural!” He is visibly happy, laughing and enjoying himself, and so are we. The solemnity of the theatre gradually dissolves into something distinctly Italian. At the bar, audience members request Spritz, although the venue does not serve them. The evening concludes around 9:30 p.m., a reminder that those in their forties tend to retire early.