album rating: ★★★★☆
Genre: Italian pop / jazz / cabaret / world music. Una Faccia in Prestito is Paolo Conte's most extensive and ostentatious studio album, presenting the songwriter and pianist at his most mannerist and playful. Across seventeen tracks in under an hour — his longest single disc to date — Conte surveys his by now vast stylistic range: swing, tango, milonga, pasodoble, bolero, German cabaret, jig, and the irrepressible idiom of the Italian south, often within a single song. Texts weave together Italian, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese and the Piedmontese dialect of his native Asti region. Conte is accompanied by the core band he had worked with since the early 1990s: bassist Jino Touche, percussionist Daniele Di Gregorio, and accordionist and multi-instrumentalist Massimo Pitzianti, with additional contributions from other band members on specific tracks.
Label: CGD East West (Italy / Europe), 1995.
Producer: Renzo Fantini. Arrangements by Paolo Conte himself. Recording engineer: Massimo Visentin.
Recording studio: Studiottanta Fortuna Records, Calliano Monferrato, Italy. Mixing: Studio Fonoprint, Bologna, Italy.
Critical reception: Critical reception was enthusiastic. AllMusic described the album as presenting Conte 'at his most mannerist,' effortlessly combining genres 'with astonishing musical facility,' and noted that 'the aesthetic of pastiche, always important in Conte's oeuvre, becomes the very essence of this album.' Italian critics and devotees have ranked it among his finest works; at least one major Italian review called it his 'absolute masterpiece.' Some reviewers noted that the sheer richness of the album can become tiring across its seventeen tracks, but acknowledged the consistent brilliance of individual songs such as 'Danson Metropoli' and 'Epoca'.
Commercial success: Una Faccia in Prestito reinforced Conte's status as an internationally recognised cult figure of great popularity in Italy, France and across much of Europe. It was his most commercially ambitious studio project and performed solidly across his key markets, further bolstering his reputation as one of Italy's most distinctive living songwriters.
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