Joan Thiele

Lucio Corsi was an emblematic case of an artist who, at the Sanremo Festival, was able to make himself known and appreciated by a mainstream, cross-generational audience. The more attentive listeners among that vast audience may have also caught, standing out among much fluff, the proposal of pop-rock songwriting by Joan Thiele, who now releases this "Joanita." It’s not a debut, in fact, at least "Tango" (2018) deserves to be rediscovered in its sophisticated and cosmopolitan pop, with injections of r’n’b, soul, and electronic elements.

This post-Sanremo album, the first entirely in Italian, is more connected to the idea of pop and rock songs, although filtered through decades of reinterpretations and hybridizations, as well as a world of soundtracks. "Joanita" represents a journey through the singer's roots and influences, with tracks ranging from pop-rap and urban rhythms to more ethereal melodies, often vintage, and Latin influences that hark back to her Colombian origins.

Introduced by the impalpable melancholy of "La forma liquida," a slowed-down chamber pop, the album plays with noir tones in the pop torn apart by the reverberated electric guitars of "Veleno" and engages with a jazz-rap beat in "Bacio sulla fronte," with smoky brass, a hypnotic voice, and Middle Eastern echoes.

It is, therefore, a personal synthesis that we hear: very different elements held together by the voice and interpretation of the artist, from the haunting melody of the evocative sixties "Tramonto" to the slightly distorted hallucination of “Acqua blu,” up to the more immediate Sanremo moment "Eco," a refined and melancholic pop, again adorned by the guitar and with a nod to “Goodnight Moon” by Shivaree. It even lends itself to a sweet acoustic song like "L'invisibile," which connects her to Brazilian music.

A special mention goes to the duet "Occhi da gangster" (feat. Frah Quintale), which seems to have come out of a James Bond film and contains a quote from Piero Umiliani.

After the orchestral arrangement of the trip-hop "Volto di donna," the album concludes with the Neapolitan song "Pazzerella," sung by a different voice (perhaps her mother?), with no musical accompaniment: a way to restore a domestic, nostalgic, intimate atmosphere at the end of an almost eponymous album, showing us a singer-songwriter more than ready to start a second musical life. All of Italy has realized the existence and value of Lucio Corsi. Let’s hope that the same enthusiasm can bring the well-deserved attention to Joan Thiele.

23/02/2025