Lion Music 2013
Personalities
Italian virtuoso feels the way towards the light that goes up close.
An abundance of ideas is a good thing; their allocation, though, is a different kettle of fish, but this guitarist from Rome swims well in any container. A pity, then, that, five albums into his career, Fiorletta still draws his six-string lines over the metal palette. The listener’s nailed to it from opener “Ascent” to the descent of “To The Station” which meld meticulous classical gamuts to the tickling country grain with inroads into the blues field, to witness, for the most part, a usual bout of technique taking over the tune. That’s how it is in the likes of “Your Grit Is My Reason Of Life” where the axe dances around the melody too much, while a few of John Macaluso’s hints at drum solo feel a needless extra inside the studio as opposed to live delivery.
Quite often a feeling arises that a certain piece could make a fine solo for a song, and Simone knows how to interpret one, coming up with an amazing acoustic cover – instrumental, as the rest of the record is – of “You And I” by his compatriots AT THE WEEKEND. So there’s a duality in his modus operandi that the artist addresses in the bass-swaggering prog cut “Doctor Jekyll And Mister Hide” and sheds for good in the transparent orchestral romanticism of “April 14th 2010” and “In Time Of War” to boil the fusion down to jazz-rock with no clang in sight. If it’s the future he pursues, glory might well be on the horizon.
***4/5
