An Alien in Italian pop: «We need strange records»

«I had even forgotten about this album», says Matteo Alieno at the beginning of the interview. And ultimately in this sentence, which is not a joke, there is all the jaunty and cartoonish personality of the twenty-eight year-old Roman singer-songwriter. Someone will remember him among the contestants of an edition of X Factor a few years ago (it was 2023). He won over the public and judges by singing at the auditions “Io non piango” by Franco Califano, the unreleased “Più o meno” («The TV living rooms full of old men plus remade hearts that everyone is watching») and “Sfiorivano le viole” by Rino Gaetano, before taking the talent stage with covers of “Dio mio no” by Lucio Battisti, “Non è per semper” by Afterhours and “Costruire” by Niccolò Fabi. Who knows what would have happened if the rules of that year’s Sky talent show hadn’t provided for the competing singers to sing a cover of 883 in one episode, for the pay-TV launch of the series dedicated to Max Pezzali and Mauro Repetto, the furthest thing from the very sixties imagery of the Roman singer-songwriter: he was eliminated a couple of episodes from the final. Not bad: on Now, however, the time has come for the Roman singer-songwriter to take back his space. He does it with an album, this “Stare al mondo”, which comes out today: it is the third in his discography, after “Astronave” in 2020 and “Alieni” in 2022, but the first after the talent experience.

How did you forget about this record in the first place?

«I finished it a long time ago. I also lost count. I forgot it sounded like that. But I find myself there, of course.”

“I went to record new music in London. I wanted to escape, breathe new air and have fewer mental constraints”, you told Rockol more or less a year ago. Did you find what you were looking for there?

“Yes. I felt that freedom that I wanted to have firsthand when I actually started working on the album together with Luca Caruso, a musician who has collaborated with giants such as Rick Rubin, Lewis Capaldi and who currently plays with beabadoobee, a brilliant promise of British indie, who lives there. In the studio we recorded without any type of conditioning. We literally did whatever we wanted. And then this album features some great musicians from the British scene. A dream. “He who wins, he wins” and “Piselli” were mastered by Tom Archer, who has worked with David Byrne, the Strokes and a thousand others: he has maximum attention to small details. In “Tonno” Jason Vance Harris, from the beabadoobee band, plays the guitar. In the same “Piselli” there is Seth Tackaberry on bass, who played with Arlo Parks, Laufey and others».

It seems like the album of a mature, experienced artist: an auteur pop that has its roots in the Italian and international imagination of the 70s and then approaches the British indie rock world. How to put Ivan Graziani and Radiohead together. Instead it is the album of a debutant, or almost. What position can it have in the Italian market?

«I don’t know, but I don’t care. I think the Italian market needs strange records. Like mine. I am a listener, before a songwriter. And as a listener I suffer from the fact that there are trends that become flat waves. You can’t follow the waves, because when the waves reach the shore they die down, they go out. This doesn’t seem like a smart strategy to me. When someone follows a trend it’s a bit like when a teenager dyes their hair green, maybe, because it’s fashionable to do so: then you look back at yourself years later and say “what an idiot”. Things, when you do them for fashion, age badly. I want to listen to this album again in ten or twenty years and still feel it as mine.”

So what league does Matteo Alieno play in in Italian pop?

«I don’t know what places are available. Nothing can be distinguished anymore. I hope to occupy the place of sincere people. I divide artists like this: between those who are sincere and those who are liars.”

Is there more sincerity or more lies around?

«More lies, unfortunately. It seems to me that we just follow trends: anyone who follows that path cannot be sincere. I don’t deny that in the past I too had tried to do more pop things. In one way or another I was a liar too.”

Have you atoned for your sins with this album?

“I think so. It’s all fully played, human, analog. An album born from passion and urgency, not from an interest: not from the desire to do something that works, but only from the desire to experiment. We started looking a bit at LCD Soundsystem, a bit at the Strokes. In the end the points of reference were lost.”