Nico Morelli – Let Me Play, Let Me Pray

Do you feel like dancing to bring back the beautiful sunshine we’ve had for 5 days in a row this mid-October 24, you inveterate pagans?

If I weren’t holding you back with an iron fist, I’m sure you’d be sacrificing a young virgin (does that still exist?) on the altar of your solar god to (re)summon him back to the skies over our beautiful Hexagon.

Well, the first theme (called “Yaleekaawa“) from Nico Morelli‘s latest album – who is not the double bi of Nico, the Velvet Underground muse and furtively Lou Reed’s girl under the benevolent gaze of Andy Wah Roll(sroyce) – this first theme, I said before you interrupted me at the stop, is made for you!

He starts it off with a snarling keyboard that sounds like an accordion, then throws his 88 keys into the game, and off you go, my freaky friends (U’re my friends, ain’t U?)

Morelli, if you don’t know him as well as I do – which I doubt very much, as you’re a bunch of cracks with a monumental jazz culture – is capable of anything, even of living in Paris for ages, despite being born & raised in Ritaly. This gives him a Machiavellian-Cartesian color, with traces of Nino Rota, Andrea Bocelli and other transalpine lyricists adept at cantabile (of course!) and… but no, not Clayderman: Jeeeezzz, you can be so silly at times!

In short (I said I wanted to keep it short, and pig – halal, of course – who disavows me), let me sum it up: Morelli is thick or light swing, but always relevant – with luminous piano, fleshy keyboards, manual percussion, et Chet erra), beautiful melody to make you dance (remember the first track with the exotic name?) or weep like a Magdalena while calling your mum for help because it’s too much. Too much what? But beautiful! (ma, cazzo, ci mancherebbe meno, porca Madonna!)

So do I still need to tell you, concerning this CD featuring ha-llu-ci-nating versions of “Giant Steps“, “Amazing Grace“, “La Bohême“… to blow your DC (whose secret code I obviously don’t know – but my heavily armed, sinister-looking henchmen, whom I pay cash, are on the case, as usual) at the feunaque or the other one there, who rides like an amazon and whose name I’ve forgotten.

Unless, of course, you go to one of the few small record shops that are competent in this field and whose stall can be found, on Waze or Goût gueule mappe, between 150 and 2000 km from your homeswitôme.

Go for it, goddammit! By now, you should be back with your arms full of copies of “Let Me Play, Let Me Pray” (and I don’t have to pray for that) to give – before and after Jingle Bells and your ritual New Year’s binge – to your uncles, aunts, cousins and other relatives who are counting on you to de-depress them, and to whom you’ll say, like good old Rabelais: “…Seeing the mourning that undermines and consumes you…” I offer you this major disc. And please don’t drink with it!”

As for me, a small Lithuanian whisky flavored with cranberries (don’t worry: the Vilnius Jazz review is in the pipeline and will be online shortly) awaits me in the huge kitchen of my luxurious home in Bagnolet. Whatcha think? It really pays to work for couleursjazz.fr, but don’t tell that to my jealous colleagues who work for the print music press that will soon be wiping itself out in the sawdust of the bleeding arenas of jazz moozik.