Tananai now knows how to take penalties

“I love matches, but I don’t know how to take penalties”, Tananai sings in unison with the circa 8 thousand spectators in the sports hall. The lyrics are those of “Calcutta” (yes, that Calcutta). Not exactly a hit from the Milanese singer-songwriter’s repertoire, as he himself acknowledges: “It didn’t certify anything. Will it have sold the equivalent of, well, 20 copies? But it connects me with so many of you because it talks about insecurity. I wrote it for myself and for all those who feel insecure despite their surroundings“, he explains, in front of the packed stands of the Palazzo dello Sport in Rome, where last night he stopped with the tour linked to his latest album “

CalmoCobra”, released last month. When the song came out it was 2019. Tananai wasn’t exactly the phenomenon that fills the arenas today. “My old record company didn’t understand me / they were worried about my troubles, my paranoia / but then sign a parrot who doesn’t make a fuss / they never helped me much, but asked a lot”, he would recall a couple of years later in “Maleducation”, which is also not missing from the concert lineup, recalling that period. Five years later, Alberto Cotta Ramusino – it is his real name – does not have the number 10 behind the motorcyclist sweatshirt he shows off on the stage of the Capitoline sports hall, where instead he had the 25 (the placement at the 2022 Sanremo Festival with “Occasional Sex”), but he has learned to beat penalties: he has become a hitmaker of contemporary Italian pop, with a repertoire that finds its natural dimension in large arenas and the charisma of a daring frontman of an indie rock band of the 2000s.

The reference to genre and period is not accidental. It is from that sonic and aesthetic world that he took inspiration for “CalmoCobra” and the related tour. “I will also play guitar and piano. Now I perceive myself as a group, not as a soloist”, he had promised the day before. And on stage, where he arrives emerging from a track that starts from nothing, from an unspecified point (no one sees him coming, just as no one saw him coming two and a half years ago when with “Sesso occasionale” at the Ariston he ranked last placed between sticks and slips, only to then take his revenge later), It actually has a band sound “Fango” is an anti-declaration of intent: “On the other hand, yes, I sing to you / even here, here in the mud”, he whispers, after the introductory video in which he mentions the Cobra fighter to whom he dedicated the title of the album, that “by dint of running through the steppes, the prairies and the mountains” he began to see the outlines of things around him “all blurry” and “so one day, without saying goodbye, he disappeared riding towards the horizon”.

It is the metaphor of that success that burns and consumes and to which he responded by unplugging for a few months: a necessary pit stop to go back to speeding at 300 km/h like on “Booster” or “Quelli come noi”, which bring in the show immediately goes live.

It seems to have been catapulted to the Palazzo dello Sport in Rome directly from the stage of a European summer festival: with a production like this, which flirts with that imagery, it wouldn’t look out of place in such a context. “Veleno” with that piano riff winks at “Somewhere only we know” by Keane. The organ of “Hallway” quotes i Coldplay of “Fix you” (but in the lyrics it pays homage to Fiordaliso: “I don’t want the moon”). In “Vanilla”, instead, seems to steal a drum fill from the Arctic Monkeys. The guitars of “The best years” are borrowed from the Strokes. On “Rave, eclipse” harks back to the magmatic electronics of

M83. References that are expertly mixed by the band – Enrico Wolfgang Leonardo Cavion and Riccardo Onori on guitars, Daniel Bestonzo on keyboards, Enrico Fasino on bass and Donald Renda on drumspeople who played with Jovanotti, Salmo, Samuel from Subsonica – together with the others to whom Tananai refers. Who in “CalmoCobra” tried to raise his bar, trying to write songs with unexpected harmonic structurestaking themselves out of the game today when it is the race to the bottom and to immediacy that guarantees the result. Pieces like “Veleno”, “Ragni” and “Punk love storia” (in which however he quotes Tiziano Ferro from “Non me lo so explain”) have already become classics of his repertoire, according to the reactions with which they are received by the sports hall: “I have to thank you because we announced this tour a long time ago and there were no new songs yet, but many of you bought tickets sight unseen. I feel lucky”, he smiles.

Although today it flirts with British indie rock, Tananai doesn’t forget his past as a DJ. On “Pasta” giant colored springs appear on the giant screen, making fans want to go wild in the parterre and in the stands. “Baby goddamn”, with that irresistible bass line, increases the dose.

He says he is working on a new song “that I don’t know when it will be released” and asks the audience to repeat a melody that he barely mentions, “because I would like to include your choirs in the piece”. It’s a little act that he actually does in every city on the tour: “Then maybe the piece comes out and who knows how many people will make claims on the SIAE side,” he quips. On “.No borders” presents himself at the center of the stage, lit only by a bullseye, with an acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder. He is surprised by a fan action: thousands of sheets of paper rise from the parterre, illuminated by cell phone torches. “You are the lights of New York”: the writings quote a verse from the lyrics of the song, a hooligan serenadea love story set in a pub between a boy whose only love language is stadium chants and a girl who, unfortunately, will leave him too soon due to illness.

Tananai sings other stories than those that seem to be popular today: stories of dedications kneeling under the neon signs of sex shops. And it works. Just listen to the chants on “Tango”, his manifesto: “I’ve been waiting for you for an hour, I didn’t want to tell you on the phone”. AND Never mind that he doesn’t score an overhead kick in the endexcluding from the lineup that “Short stories” that objectively Without the shoulder Annalisa wouldn’t work (the only guest is Aries, who appears alongside him in “Minefield”). Tananai was satisfied with the penalty he earned by cleverly entering the area. He takes the ball and puts it on the spot, with confidence and conviction. Now the number 25 is no longer afraid of slipping and sending the ball who knows where.