EMOTIONAL TATTOOS

Since there hasn't been any review of PFM's latest record, I might well just start with my very first review.

I have been a huge fan of PFM ever since I listened to 1972's Per un amico about one and a half years ago. I wasn't only wonderful 34 minutes spent, but also my entry to the world of RPI. And when I heard that they are going to release a new studio album this fall, I was a very lucky guy. One thing more before we begin, as an aforementioned big fan of the band (liking every record from Storia 'till Jet Lag, Suonare Suonare and Stati di Immaginazione) I may just be a little more tolerant than your average RPI fan

Premiata Forneria Marconi is a very strange band, after releasing dozens of albums during the 70s and 80s, just one in the 90s they are a real chameleon in the new millenium, releasing only two real studio efforts with 2000's Serendipity and 2006's Stati Di Immaginazione and some what I call creative experiments with their Dracula Album, Mozart Album and that A.D thing. Stati was a huge thing, entirely instrumental but as the score can tell you it stands with their best, so the level of anticipation was high. 2017's Emotional Tattoos will be a very devisive record - and your attitude towards it will depend on your personal preferences. If you can cope with the first side of 1980's Suonare Suonare and it's fusion of light prog with pop and rock and some killer chroruses, you'll probably like Emotional Tattoos as well - if you can't well you will probably not rate this among 2017's finest records. The first two singles available at this moment give a relatively good impression on what is to be expected. Emotional Tattoos is released in two forms, English and Italian - I never listened to the English Version and probably never will, those vinyl fans out there be warned, only the orange vinyl is italian.

Emotional Tattoos is not as progressive for instance the new Maxophone record, but it's not a simple pop album. First off the albums sounds great though the instruments sound vastly different than those found on Stati but after the first synths on opener "il regno" you'll notice that Patrick Djivas bass playing is incredible, very upfront and varied. The violin is also very dominant much to the dismay of guitar fans - this being the first PFM record without founding member Franco Mussida and though Mario Sfolgi plays just fine, he is barely noticable on this album. With Mussida gone, dummer Franz di Cioccio assumes the role of the sole lead vocalist with is fine from a vocal standpoint - the guy sound great for being 70 - but much less pleasent from a drumming standpoint. Franz is a very skilled drummer, but he is not a god, he probably can't sing a whole song while playing complicated progdrums. This is very noticeable on this album with the only complicated drum pattern being on the instrumental "Freedom Square" which is fantastic by the way.

What we have here is over 60 minutes of good music with sprinkles of prog in it, mostly noticable on the aforementioned instrumental, the middle part of the albums second track "Oniro", the fast and frantic "La danza degli specchi" and "Dalla Terra alla Luna". Other than that we have the pounding bass playing of the albums second single "La Lezione", a very dominant violin on "Quartiere Generale", a beautiful ballad with "Le cose belle" and little bits of filler with "Il cielo che c'è", "Mayday" and sadly the albums closing track "Big Bang". The album would have definetly benefited of a shorter running time. What all of these tracks have in common are killer choruses, giving me earworm after earworm all weekend.

Is Emotional Tattoos good? Well it depends, I liked it quite a lot, it is not as good as Stati, the classic albums or Suonare Suonare's first side, but if you can live with the fact, that the band's not that quiet pastoral acoustic band of the first two records and neither the eclectic one of records three and four and Stati, nor the jazzy one of Jet Lag, you'll find a fine collection of songs with this late years release. Let's hope there will be future records maybe in the vein of old in the future.

(sorry if there are any grammatical errors in this review, I'm a native Austrian)

PFM? PFM?! No not PFM! Far from PFM. The world monitors their activity for almost half a century and knows very well that there's PFM where and when there's Franco Mussida. No Mussida means no PFM. Mussida was their creative driving force for their best decades and wrote most of their best music. Mussida is missing on Emotional Tattoos - and, as a result, PFM is in fact missing on their newest album... as figuratively so literally. Only one original member participated, the drummer Franz Di Cioccio, and another long surviving (since 1973) member, the bassist Patrick Djivas. I don't know who wrote those 11 primitive and musically lightminded songs, but they clearly show that now, instead of Mussida, the leader of the band is Miss Baker. No matter if she is just a virtual character from long gone 1987, her spirit is still alive, revived and brought back into activity with the PFM's new release. Only Freedom Square reminds music; the rest is straight FM rock mixed with straight FM pop slightly camouflaged with prog of moderate quality. What a pity that this album was released under the holy name of Premiata Forneria Marconi.

Legendary Italian proggers Premiata Forneria Marconi (P.F.M) need little introduction, the symphonic band delivering three of the defining RPI LP's back in the early Seventies, and then achieving a commercial momentum once they began offering albums exclusively performed in English in the middle of that decade. Decades of line-up shuffles and musical style changes have been part of the band's history ever since, but this latest version is now led by founding member/drummer Franz Di Cioccio, who also takes on the lead vocals due to the departure of guitarist and fellow founder Franco Mussida a couple of years back, with the rest of the band being comprised of a mix of long-time serving PFM members and newer musicians.

2017's `Emotional Tattoos', the first album for PFM since signing to worldwide prog distribution specialists InsideOut Music, is an equally reliable and inconsistent listen, despite having plenty that can be praised about it. The musicianship, especially Marco Sfogli's guitars, Patrick Djivas' nicely fat upfront bass and Di Cioccio's busy driving drumming are never short of superb, and the latter's voice is confident. However, despite a few exceptions, the prog-rock sophistication of old has been replaced by a collection of melodic yet dignified mid-tempo AOR vocal rockers with little traces of proggy soloing mostly only worked into little thirty-odd second bursts here and there. That's not to say that this is a bad album in any way, just that it's really not what the majority of their fans would have been looking forward to from a new PFM work (although offering both an English version and Italian version is appreciated!), and it's especially disappointing when you consider that their last few studio works, `Stati di Immaginzione' from 2006 and 2010's `AD 2010: La Buona Novella', were superb and full of progressive rock majesty.

Looking at some of what's on offer (and the Italian version should be the preferred edition, which is the one discussed here), opener `Il Regno' evolves out of its weary dreaminess into tough whirring keyboards, heaving guitars and Franz's raspy croon. Lovely murmuring bass from Patrick, Lucio Fabbri's elegant violin licking at the edges and Alessandro Scaglione's zippy keyboarding soloing throughout `Oniro' are the first hint of the classic PFM sound, and sleek darker rocker ` La lezione' pulses with a tougher danger with its strident drums and frequently reprising twisting guitar runs.

`Mayday' is a fairly dull moody rocker lifted by fleeting tense themes, but `La danza degli specchi' is a big improvement. While some of the groovier funky spots try a little desperately to be cool, it sure jumps around in endless different directions and tempo changes in only six minutes, and there's traces of those chiming guitars, vocal flamboyance and racing darting synth runs of the PFM of old scattered throughout! `Il cielo che c'è' is a classy ballad that's easy to enjoy, and `Quartiere generale' is a catchy pop-rocker lifted by fancy reprising violin themes.

The greatest moment of the disc arrives with `Freedom Square', a folk-flecked instrumental loaded with all the spirited acoustic guitars, twirling violin jigs and keyboard driven fanfare pomp that fans forever associate with the classic PFM sound - what a shame that it's one of the shortest pieces on the album at only four and a half minutes! The busy `Dalla Terra alla Luna' grafts an easily melodic tune to heavy crashing bluster with plenty of humming Hammond organ, keyboard wig-outs and rambunctious drumming, `Le Cose Belle' is a sweet romantic ballad with tasteful playing, and closer `Big Bang' is simply another reliably enjoyable tune elevated by sparkling piano, crisp guitar and fluid bass runs (the final minute is truly sublime, and another example of `what could have been' if the album had been made up of more winning moments like this).

It's not surprising to see PFM playing in a mostly fairly straightforward rock manner here, like so many older acts do. But it's a shame when other renowned vintage Italian bands such as Metamorfosi, Cherry Five and Maxophone have all delivered extravagant and ambitious recent works of great vitality, and in comparison there's very little to associate `Emotional Tattoos' with the symphonic rockers of legend that are PFM. Sadly, the album is also overlong at 62 minutes (does InsideOut Music put demands on all the artists that sign for them that the music must have enough material to cover a double vinyl release?) when a nice 45 or so minute single-LP length, with a couple of more overtly `proggy' or symphonic pieces would have made this a much more approachable affair to be replayed more often. Still, it's nice that the band are still active, but perhaps PFM should look to their own past next time for future inspiration on where to take the band in this modern era.

Three stars.

This is the worst record PFM has put out in their entire career. Electronic, autotuned and un-imagintative. The only song I can enjoy is freedom square. The drums sound like garbage, I dont know how they managed to make that samples sound that bad in 2017. The keyboards sound like crap too, If I wanted a record with [&*!#]ty korg triton sound on it I'd be listening to El Payo Juan Manuel. Got the special edition vinyl as a gift from a fella at Metal Hammer who had it as a presskit and I confirmed its utter crap. I use it to calibrate my turntable and the CD's to keep the birds from [&*!#]ting at my window fence. Disgusting