Massimo Pieretti is an Italian keyboardist & composer who has released his first solo album, A New Beginning, a work born out of the chaotic pandemic period, and autobiographical with commentary on modern societal issues, subject matters which will always pique my interest.
Pieretti is joined by some 30 guests, including Ray Weston of Echolyn and Kate Nord on vocals. His main partner lyrically on the album and on bass, rhythm guitar is Gianluca del Torto. The work, mastered at Underworld Studio, sounds sumptuous and is available to purchase on his Bandcamp page at https://massimopieretti.bandcamp.com/album/a-new-beginning
The album’s narrative is divided into three distinct areas. There are the extremely personal & autobiographical, experimental tracks dealing with his passion for cinema & film music, and a wonderful trilogy bearing the title track of the album. Overarching themes are very much in focus, these being the environment and mutual respect. The album cover of deep introspection is worthy of mention.
We begin with the cinematic soundscape of the Intro to the album, with which we have the delicate words sung of the themes in much the same manner as Daltrey introduced Quadrophenia all those years ago. Musically this is expansive with some synth soundscapes reminiscent of Tony Banks and quite lovely.
Oh Father, as one would expect, falls firmly into the autobiographical category. Alessio Palizzi provides a strong drum riff and percussion to open the piece before a pleasant guitar solo enters. The lyrical message and the way the words are delivered plaintively are very good. My own father is still with us, but all who have lost a loved parent (in my case, my mother) will recognise the emotional link which remains and how they can and do visit us in our dreams, still guiding us after all these years, but how we also remember (fondly) those arguments we had whilst growing up. This is a very personal song and executed in precisely the musical manner which the subject would be justly proud of with a lightness of touch and loving notes, especially those keyboards soaring at times.
In November follows. It opens with delicate acoustic guitar and some synth effects. When the vocals begin, I enjoy the harmonies created by Marco Descontus on lead and the fragility of Francesca Pelliccia on backing. Lyrically and musically, the song paints a good picture of that transitional period between autumn and winter when the birds are still flying but the leaves are falling and posits the smiling eyes of the writer’s life love.
Growing Old is up next. This is, of course, a natural condition, and a process I remain unscared of and, indeed, in many respects welcome, because with age should come wisdom and thankfulness for what we have had and is still to come. However, that is set against the realisation that as we grow older, we simply cannot do what we used to in the same way, if at all, and the poignancy of this regret and wistful thinking is reflected well in this song. Weston features here on lead vocals, and he portrays that sense of helplessness extremely well. The bass intro is simply gorgeous set against a simple piano before we get a joyous explosion of noise with the guitar. As the track closes, there is a symphonic joy with strings, guitar, and synths combining before the track closes with perfect reflection in the electric piano notes and the bassline.
Is It That Girl, Right? Elana D’Angelo handles the vocal duties with aplomb. The song carries with it a lot of anger lyrically and musically is suitably sad portraying a story of betrayal and the eternal difficulties in maintaining relationships.
Out of this World features the spoken voice of Charlie Chaplin from The Great Dictator against a thoughtful score and some plaintive female voices. The whole effect is quite powerful and can quite easily be set against the extreme populism and ignorance of rationality which is being inflicted upon us in the modern times. This is a very clever mixture of the classic into a modern societal and musical setting.
Back in days gone past, in the UK, we would sit in the cinema through a feature-length film, and there would be an interlude usually about halfway through, with especially designed music whilst we brought and ate our ice creams. Thus, Pieretti provides us here with his Interlude, just over one minute of the type of electric piano sound which again fans of Tony Banks will especially enjoy, accompanied by the most beautiful sax solo by Marco Orfei and some great bass by Fabrizio Russo. In the context of this album, I fully understand the purpose of this brief passage between sections, but musically it is so lovely, I really am left wishing for far more of it.
We resume with Things To Live and Die For, an enigmatic title if ever I saw one. It is a deeply personal piece of music with Weston again providing the perfect vocal backdrop to the theme, ably accompanied in harmony by Germana Noage. It is my hope that if Pieretti develops this progressive experiment further, it might take the evolution of a more permanent outfit which should absolutely have male and female voices at its heart, because he has a very good ear for harmony and melody. Life is full of hopes, fears, pride, and regret, and this song puts all into a suitably thoughtful context featuring more subtle string orchestration.
Family & Business follows and is another in that deep autobiographical space. It is more of a classic rock inspired track than much of what preceded it, and the organ could easily have appeared on much early Purple output. It is a rollicking track speaking of more than a handful of regret and, indeed, anger in the spoken words and guitar riffs which make for a contrast to much else in the album.
We then come to the title track, split into two parts, followed by the third part of the trilogy, I Hope You Will Always Be Here.
The beginning is marked by the vocals of Ciro Afeltra and are intriguing to these ears (in a good way) veering between the spoken and the delicately sung. Some of the guitar work really is achingly beautiful in the finest tradition of classic artists such as Hackett & Knopfler - Avicolli & Pistillo take a very deep bow and the keyboard work of the main protagonist brings the whole work together, veering between urgent, but straightforward, piano, and complex synth arrangements. The song is a very interesting mix of the progressive, almost new wave, AOR, and a touch of colder synth-led Kraut, so rather intriguing and very good indeed.
The closing piece of this threesome opens with a painfully lovely guitar and piano before the extremely talented singer Kate Nord takes your breath away with her voice, full of smoky mystery. Lyrically, there is a hope that we can all change course as a race and start to respect our planet and each other – a new beginning, indeed. This is a deeply impressive main segment close to a very good album and as a track deserves extensive radio airplay and attention in the commercial world.
The album is not quite finished with us, and we are treated with a reprise of the lovely Intro, and acoustic versions of In November, which is a vocally sexy jazz infused delight, and Things To Live and Die For, which provides an urgency and interesting contrast to the main piece.
A New Beginning is another of those albums I can honestly state has been a pleasure to be asked to review. It is a new album by an artist which fits perfectly into the mission of this website to hopefully bring to a wider audience music which is fresh, intelligent, interesting, and extremely well performed. It comes very highly recommended, is a pleasure from start to finish, and will be listened to in this household for a long time.
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