“Absurd Stories”, the new album by Bobo Rondelli

Absurd Stories, the new album by Bobo Rondelli, recorded and performed together with the friends Musica da Ripostiglio, will be released on June 14, 2024. A date to mark on the calendar, breaking a three-year fast from the previous album by the Livorno singer-songwriter (Free Heart). There will be thirteen songs to listen to like a sip in the sunset that anticipates summer.

A blend of swing and singer-songwriter songs, a book of stories in the form of songs with irreverent tones and politically incorrect lyrics, where irony tells a world of vices and rumors, insults and transgressions, but there are also more intimate and reflective passages, as is always in Bobo’s spirit. Absurd Stories is an album that revisits some of his “battling donkeys”, from Absurd Stories to From the balcony, and also presents, for the first time in the studio, songs that Bobo has been performing live for years, such as La chiappona or The gigolo of Rotterdam; but there are also new creations to discover. Recorded by Davide Fatemi, the album is produced by The Cage and will be released by the record label The Saifam Group.

In addition to the release date, there is another thing to reveal to continue warming up the anticipation: it is the album cover, made by Tommy, the pseudonym of Tommaso Eppesteingher. A Livorno illustrator, as well as a drawing and art history teacher at the Liceo Cecioni in Livorno, since 1989 he has collaborated with Il Vernacoliere as a cartoonist and comic book artist, and has been active in the music field for years, having created numerous album covers for both Italian and foreign groups and projects. How the idea of working on the cover of Bobo Rondelli’s new album came about is told by himself: “Last year I created Livorno Tarots together with Giovanni Pelosini, where Bobo appears as Ir Matto. He liked this thing, so he called me to congratulate me and from there the idea of working on the cover of his new album was born. I was inspired by that card, but rearranging it a bit to refer to the songs on the album and trying to represent the idea of Bobo as a free artist and outside the rules. I quoted some of his typical places in Livorno, with a view of the New Fortress from the Pontino San Marco district, and I added a series of details that were suitable to convey the idea of popular Livorno, in a nocturnal and characterized by the presence of ambiguous characters. I believe that Bobo Rondelli represents Livorno and its people, but he is also unique on the national scene. I am honored to have participated in his new album.” A turned-over rum punch, a cigarette butt on the ground, and a broken bottle, a cat clinging to Bobo’s leg, walking nonchalantly, whistling along the ditches of Livorno with his guitar on his shoulder. A small absurd scene of a borderline world that will be found in the album coming out on June 14.

It will be a new chapter in the solo discography of the Livorno artist, which began in 2001 with Son of nothing, after the three albums released with Ottavo Padiglione (to which Ultima follia/Best a bestia was added in 2003), and continued with other gems like Desperate, intellectuals, drunks, For love of heaven, or the tribute to Piero Ciampi, from a Livorno’s point of view. Singer-songwriter, but also an actor, Bobo worked with director Paolo Virzì, who made him the protagonist in the documentary (released in 2009) The man who had hit his head and gave him a role in the 2010 film The first beautiful thing. In 2019, instead, What are you looking at was released, Bobo Rondelli’s autobiographical novel.