The music of La Representative di Lista knows no boundaries
Next October 25th The List Representative will release the new album “Happy Days”. The album by the duo composed of Veronica Lucchesi (who turns 37 today) e Dario Mangiaracina follows the previous one by three and a half years “My mom”released in March 2021. Before throwing ourselves with wide open ears into listening to the band’s new songs, let’s take a step back and listen to some songs from the old album accompanied by reading our review.
“When I pass through Via degli Men / I always feel like the protagonist / In the next elections I will be / The representative of the list”, reads the refrain of “The representative of the list”, a song included in the first album by Veronica Lucchesi and Dario Mangiaracina, “ per la (Via di casa)”, released in March 2014. Seven years after that album with its sometimes folkloristic sounds and that song, a bit of a manifesto for the project born in 2011 from the meeting between the Tuscan singer and the multi-instrumentalist from Palermo so much so as to carry the group’s name in the title, La Representative di Lista debuted in competition at the Sanremo Festival with the song “Amare” and published its fourth long-distance test, “My mamma”.
On the Ariston stage, where the band had already performed in 2020 alongside Rancore in the cover of “Luce” by Elisa on the occasion of the duets evening of the seventieth edition of the event, the lineup led by Veronica and Dario managed to remain faithful to his writing and his world.
However, on the occasion of her participation in Sanremo 2021, La Representative di Lista somehow also wore more pop clothes – in addition to those designed by Valentino. With the help of his historic collaborator Roberto Cammarata and Dario “Dardust” Faini, in “Amare” the group united its less conventional artistic soul – more like headlining a festival like Miami, where the band was truly in 2019, which from Ariston – with a language and sound more suitable for the national-popular audience of Rai 1. The entire album “My mamma” plays on this union, resulting in a work capable of bringing the music of Lucchesi and Mangiaracina’s project to as many ears as possible (the album reached fifth position in the ranking of the best-selling albums in Italy drawn up by Fimi a week after its release). However, sometimes the ten tracks of the album lack the electricity and theatricality that have characterized the group’s music and performances in the past.
“Queer pop band” is the definition that La Representative di Lista gives of itself: “Ours is a music that knows no boundaries. Hence the expression ‘queer’ pop. Once upon a time ‘queer’ was synonymous with ‘faggot’, today it refers to fluidity,” the band told Rockol. In its new album, with the cover created by the Palermo artist Manuela Di Pisa and inspired by the painting “L’origine du monde” by the French painter Gustave Courbet, the formation led by Veronica Lucchesi and Dario Mangiaracina sets no limits, ranging from more frenetic electronic music to the most delicate pop, it steals rock cues and does not fail to include ballads with solo piano and voice.
“My mamma” opens with the song “Religiously”, which in terms of tone and lyrics seems to take up the song “Woow”, the conclusion of the previous album “Go go diva” from 2018.
“And the day we were comes back to me / You and I were strangers / There was no day without you”, Veronica Lucchesi sings with her ringing but firm voice in a passage of the first track of the new work by La Representative di Lista, referring to that idea of sharing a single body that becomes a community. But if in the 2018 album the band’s energy was expressed in more electro-rock sounds, in “My mamma” the journey of La Representative di Lista continues on a less aggressive and primordial level, distant above all from the folk of the album “Bu bu sad” in 2015. The second track “Oh ma oh pa” and “Alieno”, the trailblazing single, experiment with different sound environments and contain within them the group’s intent to make a media leap through catchy sounds. In the first song, a captivating refrain and a choral arrangement dominate, while in the piece published last February it is the frenetic, slightly dance-like rhythm that enchants the listener.
In “My mamma” there is also a song performed vocally by Dario Mangiaracina. In “Fragile” the multi-instrumentalist from Palermo, supported by a rhythmic electronic base and a string section, sings: “I fly, I fly, I fly / And then I kill myself, I die / To feel fragile”. The undisputed protagonist of the entire “My mamma”, however, is the voice of Veronica Lucchesi, capable of being clear but at the same time biting, powerful but also sweet. In a song like “Sarà” – produced by Fabio Gargiulo, already alongside the band for “Go go diva” – and in the ballad “Paesaggi Diritti” the singer strikes both for her vocality and for her way of shining and at the same time take on vigor to give weight to the words to be interpreted.
In the last track of the album, entitled “Mai Mamma”, Veronica returns, however, to a more theatrical intonation, continually changing register within the same song. “All that I have experienced / I will give it, it will be lost / All that I have learned / Who do I give it to? Who did I give it to?”, proclaims the voice of La Representative di Lista at the beginning of the song, which opens with sound cues stolen from the urban world – reminding the distant “Hollaback girl” by Gwen Stefani. The piece continues and turns into an EDM piece, then techno and Veronica’s singing itself becomes an integral part of the music, in a very long “na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na”.
The song that La Representative di Lista presented on the stage of the Ariston Theatre, “Amare”, the band’s calling card to the general public, is among the most enveloping and captivating tracks on the album.
Veronica’s voice is powerful and emotional in the chorus (“Loving without having much, screaming after crying”), while sweeter and more trembling in the verses to tell the different facets of love (“I would like to be everything / I could be nothing / In endless road / Fear is life”). The band’s Sanremo single, however, with a sound carpet built on keyboards and the catchiest electronics, is more reminiscent of Coldplay’s “A sky full of stars” than a song in full La Representative di Lista style like “this body” from “Go go diva”. “Amare”, as well as the entire “My mamma”, led the band to become known and appreciated by a large audience, but it may also have turned up the nose of some long-time fans of the group, accustomed to the explosiveness almost primordial of the lineup and their less composed performances compared to those of Sanremo.
Even though it distances itself from the atmosphere and dimension of the previous albums by Veronica Lucchesi and Dario Mangiaracina, the new album by La Representative di Lista still sounds like the result of work with attention to the smallest details and played with sincerity. For intensity and experimentation, one of the best moments of the album that could bring together fans of the first hour and new ones is “Resistere”. The penultimate track of “My mamma” is a song to that desire to “try to exist”, interspersed with a spoken speech by Veronica (“Confronting myself with society doesn’t scare me / Essence without limits / The wonder of my eyes will not crumble ”), where the music is supported by synths and a rhythm section to underline the fluidity typical of the group.
