DOLCE ACQUA

It was 1972. My mother was watching the San Remo festival. Then I saw those hippie guys singing a song called Jesahel. Even if I was still only 12 years old (my serirous musical interest didn´t really start until I was 14) I was quite impressed by what I heard and saw (they didn´t win, but their brilliant performance made quite a stir). Some 40 years later I was in a friend´s house when I found this CD with an impressive cover. I decided to borrow it, without even listening a single note and the fact that I had never heard of the band. Well, with a cover like that I could guess it might be good. At least it would bring memories of the pop art of the period, which was quite common.

I was quite surprised that this is the band that made Jesahel (included here as a bonus track). Having found the name of the group and title of the song it was easy to look for their San Remo stunning performance on the YouTube (Gosh, don´t we all LOVE YouTube?). But back to the album: Dolce Acqua was their debut LP. After several spins I should say this CD is very, very good. Not perfect, not a masterpiece, but really good and quite promising. There are two real flaws: first, their songwriting was not fully developed at the time. All songs are nice and melodic, but a few tunes could benefit from a little more work. Nothing is bad, though. Overall the acoustic and pastoral songs are quite inspired and convincing. Second, and the main problem here, although Dolce Acqua is quite veried, the fourth track is a straight jazz number that has nothing to do with the rest of the album. Even if not a bad song per se, it completely ruins the flow and balance of the record. If you hear this CD and thinks that there is something wrong, try to listen to tit skipping that track. It´ll make much more sense. I discovered that myself after several sessions. A real shame.

Otherwise, I loved Dolce Acqua. Ivano Fossati has a great voice and his flute playing is amazing. The band is tight and accomplished. The production is ok for the time, and the remastering made it sound even better. There are some real strong material here like Ipocresia - Veritá, the title track and the opener Paura. And, of course their biggest hit, Jesahel, but it was not on the original LP. A very nice surprise.

Final rating: difficult album to rate. I guess 3,5 stars is quite fitting: a few excellent songs among other that are just good ones. Promising album from a promising band. I´m looking forward to hear its follow up.