Lucio Battisti

Album review

The late Italian pop singer's '60s debut set the blueprint for a career that would elevate him from post-Dylan troubadour to a holding the stature of cultural iconoclast in his homeland. With classic '60s production values, his singing was set against elaborate string sections and orchestrations that dabbled in psychedelia, when the market demanded it, and flirted with Baroque arrangements and grandiose song forms that were Beatles inspired, yet laced with Continental decadence. His true art was his ability to take simple texts and arrange them as transcendental poetry, thus he became the mouthpiece for the '60s generation and struggled with all of the responsibilities of being such a figure in his life and art. His debut album is filled with all the inspiration and energy of an artist working in the new communication medium of the time, and often wearing on his sleeve his exposure to English language pop of the era, he codified the methods of Dylan, Beatles, and the Walker Brothers, and transformed them into a true folk music that would speak to a generation through the ensuing three decades. "Non è Francesca" and "Balla Linda" are two exquisitely desperate '60s love songs featuring an inimitable Hammond organ, while "Un'avventura" and "29 Settembre" are glorious reminders of what late-'60s pop was all about.

© Sylvie Harrison /TiVo