QUELLA VECCHIA LOCANDA

This album fails to captivate me for the most part: I find the music far too subtle and inconsistent. I do like this debut much more than their second album, thanks mostly to the great opener 'Prologo', which is the best song in this band's entire catalog. This song is one of the few moments where this band actually 'rocks', and they do it very convincingly here with a hard syncopated beat and some impressive playing from the violinist and beautiful orchestration from 'Massimo Roselli' on piano and warm spacey analog synths. The vocals on this track are amazing as well... replete with excellent harmonies and a truly passionate delivery from Giorgio Giorgi.

The rest of the album doesn't move me and every song is less interesting than the one before it. After a decent classically-tinged violin intro, 'Un Villaggio' turns into a 'Jethro Tull' knock-off and is only saved by Massimo Roselli's excellent Moog sounds later in the song. 'Il Cieco' has some downright silly sounding passages... and 'Dialogo' starts off well but goes sour halfway through during an annoying clarinet solo and overstays it's welcome. Every track following the first has bits and pieces that are good, but they all inevitable fall apart and fail to sustain an enjoyable atmosphere.

This album is not terrible, I guess it just doesn't suit my tastes. Obviously a lot of RPI fans love this, so there must be something to it... maybe it's just not for me. If you want romantic Italian Prog you may well love this album, and QVL's follow-up 'Tempo Della Gioia' even more-so.

I like the harder-edged moments of their music and wish they had gone in that direction more often. The sound-palette is a bit too classically oriented... i would have preferred more synthesizers to the omnipresent organic instrumentation from violin and flute. But, judging it for what it is instead of what it's not: it's a decent but unessential, hit-or-miss, badly-mixed album with one excellent track.

I give it a high 2.5