Somewhere in my heart there has always been a special space for the songwriter subdued: in Italian it is said tenuous, muffled, sometimes modest, as if they were defects. During an interview with Matt Berninger years ago, I heard him say that Roy Orbison was the singer for him subdued for excellence. I remember thinking who could be an Orbison of Italian music for me, with those characteristics poised between the guessed pop and a melancholy vein that lapped well-being and then took refuge in an interior space, typical of meditations in front of a lowered window, while you are inside a moving car.
And I thought of Niccolò Fabi, aware that not many artists like this came after him. Not mystical and desperate enough to be among the great, but not so innocent and “well taken” to end up in the shallows of singers who are born and die on the radio.
I recently found one: his name is Fabrizio Fusaro, he is 25 years old, he is from Piedmont but his songs create a pleasant short circuit between the Roman school of Fabi and the guitars of Travis, certain arpeggios of the Girls in Hawaii and the first Justin Vernon in the song One, two and three (obviously with less grief), all tools and feelings of a million years ago, and characterized by a refreshing lack of shame. “You are the desire to feel bad in order to be treated” he sings in Sleep peacefully, reflecting a little the general sense of Nothing is missing from what is there. This is the name of Fusaro’s debut album, a singer subdued that aspires to this definition.
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