Achille Lauro brings his many faces to the stage and reveals the future

For Achille Lauro there are ten years of career to celebrate and the best opportunity is to do it in a new context, that of the arenas. Two dry dates, under the title “Mother Boys – The Iliad Live”, the first in Milan and the second in Rome, two dates with the band and with a special guest Boss Doms.

His musical journey

Ten years of career for Achille are a discrete time space but they are a sidereal space for his artistic seasons. As a trap star he has touched many other musical fields and styles, he has spilled over into fashion, he has created visual artistic worlds, he has written successful, more authorial songs, he has touched on rock’n’roll, he has used melody. Each time touch and go that brought him closer to worlds from which he then distanced himself as if from the meeting of two magnets with the same pole. Achille Lauro brings all this, all its faces, its facets to the stage and does so in a moment of transition in which he is looking for something that he is already starting to show with the opportunity.

Looking at the number of songs in the set list, 41, one expects a long concert, this is indeed the case, but since some songs are short and others are sound fragments, the duration is close to 2 and a half hours. A tight time, without breaks.

An alternation of emotions

The stylistic fragmentation and artistic evolution of Lauro De Marinis (born 1990), now also an appreciated judge on XFactor, are perfectly represented even in the live version. In fact, the concert suffers from continuous stylistic variations, braking and acceleration in terms of thrust. One or two tight songs are followed by just as many slower, more intense ones. The show doesn’t have its own linearity and as such it fails to take off, but at the same time it is continually surprising. There’s everything: there’s rock, there’s samba, there’s trap (very little in reality), there’s the soul of a singer-songwriter (a lot), there’s intimacy and intensity, there is poetry and anger, there is culture and the street, there is drama and suffering, there is the remix and the Berlin club atmosphere. There’s a lot of stuff… maybe too much. And even the audience seems taken aback at some moments, they are ready to explode but then a listening piece arrives and even the most “tight” pieces are sometimes slowed down.

Accompanying Achille on stage is a band, because, yes, it is a concert performed, there are electric guitars which have a predominant role but there is also a (beautiful) part with the cello and the piano in which Lauro can make the his dramatic soul and his personal interpretative style. But beyond the music, which always has an absolute leading role, there is the production, the spectacular side of the performance. A lighting system of great power and spectacularity is combined with a multi-level stage and a constant accompaniment of flames and sparks. On stage he looks like Elvis Presley, Freddie Mercury, sometimes an arrogant suburban bully, sometimes a character straight out of “The Wild One” with Marlon Brando dressed in black leather aboard a motorbike. Charm and recklessness.

Not everything was clear

In the end, Achille Lauro gives the best of himself, especially in the writing phase, in ballads, in those songs in which a more powerfully emotional and descriptive side emerges. Songs in which the text has a strong value. This is also demonstrated by the intense “Desperate love” the new single released a few days before the concert in Milan and performed live for the first time. It’s a shame, however, that the acoustics (or the production) didn’t make the singing clear enough to fully enjoy, with the voice sometimes too covered by the instruments. (Another technical detail: for a good part of the evening he had problems with the ear monitors).

In the vast collection that he put on stage there was space for the past, including that of the origins and the present. But as if that wasn’t enough, Achille Lauro gave a glimpse of his future. In the setlist, indicated as unreleased and untitled, six songs, never heard before and which represent the future sound and “cultural” world of the singer-songwriter. What he offers are sound fragments, mixed with images, related/inspired by the Iliad. The short musical excerpts he played were mostly instrumental, or rather accompanied by a few words, all with a strong electronic matrix apart from one more guitar-based. So based on what we heard, we can imagine musical exploration in the world of electronics, of intensity, at times almost ambient, however very far from pop and rock with a literary link to the Greek classics.

The atmosphere wasn’t perfect

“Ragazzi Madre – L’Iliad il Live” is a show with a strong visual impact, sometimes a little exaggerated and pretentious, which makes it clear that Achille Lauro wants to escape from all categorisations. However, on several occasions the atmospheres seem not perfectly in line with what a sports hall requires, more linked to a club idea or perhaps, to dry it up a bit, better yet, almost theatrical for the spoken and atmospheric moments.

On 7 October it will be repeated, with a sold out, at the Palazzo dello Sport in Rome

Ladder:

Thoiry
Bam Bam Twist
Mother Boys – Prequel
Wow
Prequel – Coca Cola
Coca Cola
Elevator to hell
Unpublished
1969
Uh la la
Rude
Just us
Cadillac
Unpublished
Blue Angel / Stupid kids
Theater and cinema
Sunday
My love
Bvlgari
I don’t care
Penelope
MILK +
Unpublished
Kawasaki RMX band
Desperate Love – latest single
Unpublished
Cinderella
Now and forever
Lost for life
Rome
Unpublished
Rolls Royce
Marilu
What will it be
Unpublished
Alexander the Great
I choose the stars
Barabbas 3
March 16th
Beauty and the Beast
C’est la vie