Viking's Choice: Krano, 'Tosca'

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The Piave River flows into the Adriatic Sea, irrigating the vines of the Veneto wine region and sharing a bloody history with two battles during the Napoleonic Wars and WWI. Like that river, life and death are the ever-shifting currents that guide the Italian musician Marco Spigariol on his debut album, Requiescat In Plavem, recorded under the name Krano.

No rock 'n' roll record has felt this mysterious and free-spirited in years. R.I.P. channels Jorge Ben's late-night, alcohol-soaked vibes (heard on 1970's Fôrça Bruta) and the rambling country-blues of Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline. Or, to offer a more recent example, the wily and loose psych-folk of Skygreen Leopards. Throughout, Spigariol sings in the Veneto dialect, slurring and speeding up phrases like a broken tape deck. In the honky-tonkin' "Tosca," the piano and guitar spiral like rolls of parchment, curling in and out of rhythm. It's wild and nostalgic, and Spigariol writes that it captures a happy time in his childhood:

It's not a love song, but a song about a time when I was a little boy and my godmother Tosca used to take me to the Venice Film Festival to see motion pictures and to see the inside of the Hotel Excelsior where all the stars and VIPs stayed. We would watch the boats arrive full of important people directly from the beach of the Venice Lido.

Requiescat In Plavem comes out April 8 on Maple Death.