The place where Sara Parigi put her new songs could only be her debut solo album. It’s not by chance that its title is Stanza – the Italian word meaning “Room”. A place where she was reached by the well known Italian musician Alessandro Fiori, chosen as artistic producer.
Out today January 26th, 2024 on CD and on all digital platforms via Viceversa Records with Audioglobe/Believe distribution, Stanza brings together the ideas developed between 2020 and 2023 by the Italian singer, songwriter and musician from Prato, Tuscany. «This “Room” is the place where the thoughts of the last three years take shape. A safe place full of objects of all kinds: some are ancient and precious like treasure chests, others are shells with no use – except their beauty; still others are worn out and to be thrown away. There are also small lights that light up, illuminating the night».
Many things have changed in the meantime, to satisfy the expressive urgencies. Parigi began her career with her former alt-rock/avant-noise band Lady in the Radiator – with whom she won the prestigious Italian competition Rock Contest in 2019 – and she has now arrived to her new art-pop solo project, supported by a peculiar and elegant vocality, more direct than ever, in symbiosis with the spontaneous theatricality of her stage presence. In the ten songs of Stanza, for the first time sung in Italian language, we can find international sound influences and an underlying anxiety but also bravely intimate atmospheres as well as irregular melodies suspended between the past and the future, that is to say between traditional instruments and electronic music. According to Parigi: «The solo approach allowed me a writing space of my own. I also perceived the lyrical transition from English to Italian as a challenge – using my language is also a way to achieve honesty».
The collaboration with Alessandro Fiori – among the most relevant and original artist of the Italian independent musical scene – was enlightening from many points of view. Fiori took care of the artistic production and played together with Parigi on most of the tracks of Stanza. «Our collaboration brought me back to the dimension of visionary instinct, which reminds me why I make music. We set no limits for the development of this record, and he grasped my creative seeds, bringing them to blossom in a very special way».
The album was launched by the first single Rive, in mysterious dynamism between mellotron and synths, acoustic strings and electronic drums, a flow of deep waters with parts of the lyrics freely inspired by fragments of Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. «When I wrote this song, I had an image in my mind: a wave breaking on the sand, which now shows itself and now retreats. This image then merged in the lyrics with another movement due to a vital paradox: that of letting go, of the death of something or someone, of a place or a part of us. This song, for me, is like the description of a rite of passage, painful but also necessary».
The new single Animale shows off tension towards the lightness through rhythms that are equally obsessive and playful. «The idea behind this song is that, as human beings, we are essentially our own best friend and our own worst enemy at the same time. There are two different tendencies meeting up: while the voice expresses a certain bitterness for a cyclical nature from which it seems that one cannot escape, the music transports me to a level more inclined towards lightness».
Rive and Animale are accompanied by two brand new videoclips directed by the collective John Snellinberg, active also in the making of movies and documentaries. «Working with John Snellinberg is very natural. The result is always in line with what I want to communicate». Whether it is a destination of conquest or refuge, whether it is real, virtual or even better surreal, this is for sure the time to enter Sara Parigi’s first album.
