IL VOLO

An interesting jazz rock group made up of pieces of other well known Italian bands, Il Volo don't quite live up to their pedigreed expectations, but deliver a very well recorded, if flawed, album.

Opener Come Una Zanzara is reminiscent of latin era Return to Forever with vocals-this album is much closer to 1974 anglicized prog and jazz fusion sounds than most of their brethren (though by 1974, other Italian prog bands were starting to turn towards slicker sounding Jazz fusion). Given the combined industry experience of those involved (including lyricist to the stars, industry heavyweight Mogol), one could see they had a larger world view than most of their contemporaries.

La Mia Rivoluzione starts with acoustic guitar and vocals before heading into a slick Santana guitar break. More commercial than the opener. Il Calore Umano sports some wordless vocal choir work straight from an Italian 70's Morricone film. before hitting a decent guitar solo that almost cuts loose. This one sounds like a bunch of neo prog bands from decades in the future. You can tell that a larger amount of money was devoted to this project as it is audibly superior in recording techniques than most albums of the era. Il Canto della Preistoria starts with a spoken introduction gives us a little PFM lite. A warped bass(?) synth (?) demented little solo on top of something that sounds like Camel in their later commercial days is a nice juxtaposition-my favorite moment on side one. So far the album is a little polite for my liking as they straddle obvious commercial aspirations with obvious talent.

Side two starts with I Primi Respiri, a song that has some nice reverb tank vocals with whispering underneath that show some promise for weirdness. Bass dominates this song and it seems like its about to take off when they veer into a lazy bit of Southern California soft rock but let the final riff build until...the song stops. La Canzone del Nostro Tempo is the first burst of genuine RPI and most satisfying song on the album. A little bit of seventies Funkadelic era guitar perks things up in a fairly high energy ending. Sonno features falsetto vocals, with acoustic guitar driven piano symphonic with a polite Rothery-ish solo. Last song Sinfonia Delle Scarpe da Tennis has some great ELP stylings with barrelhouse piano and a quirky italian jig with vocals that is just too short at under three minutes.

Overall, it is odd that though there aren't any really great songs on here it still hangs together pretty well. Very well played and recorded, but a little too slick for its own good, Il Volo would be a good one to slip in for UK prog and fusion fans to try their first tastes of RPI. In a way, these guys were ahead of their time as it was another 3-4 years at least until a ton of bands started to sound like this. Perhaps this is an early example of what happened to Asia: put a bunch of amazing musicians from great bands into a room and hit 'record' on the reel to reel. The sum of the parts isn't always the miracle we'd hoped for.

3 stars

I have a German original pressing on ariola, and it is an impressive high quality recording with deep bass and crystalline treble. Do wish it was the gatefold version though.