«Dear me», Angelina Mango’s new album begins with these words. Remember those old diaries with padlocks, where each of us wrote about ourselves, but above all to ourselves, hoping that no one would read. Because the words that ended up inside were intimate, painful, harsh, instinctive and never complacent: they were full sentences, always outside their limits, never compromised by rationality.
Here, this is it CarameAngelina’s new project: a diary of sharp, direct, sincere words. As in a diary, Mango writes to himself, about himself, for himself, but the story is so honest and transparent that it becomes universal: you don’t recognize yourself (only) if you have the same story (and the same age) as Angelina, but if you let the songs on the album pass through you.
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Angelina Mango: the courage to go through and talk about pain
In an era, ours, in which pop adapts, rather wearily, to tight rhythms and very short songs to be consumed immediately, Angelina’s album takes the time to talk about the pain: everything, whole, violent, as it was, as it is. No, it is not an immediate, accommodating or welcoming album: it is painful, intense, therefore painful. Yes, I know, this time of ours requires us to perform (horrible verb, I realize, but sadly relevant) life by sweetening suffering: it must be there, in the story, but little by little, without tiring the listener (or reader or watcher); there must be, of course, but at a certain point it must end, we need hope, the solution, the happy ending. And instead Carame it requires us to stay there, in that pain, to just feel it. There’s no escaping anywhere, because each song is a small climb to be climbed with patience.
Let me be very clear, Carame it’s not a heavy record, but a record that has weight. And it has it because the songs, all written and produced by Angelina herself, have an exquisitely pop form but a singer-songwriter structure: the choruses are memorized, but the meaning of the words is not consumed in just one listen, not even in two or three. Each song is a still image of a panorama full of details, you need to look carefully to notice everything, but there is always something that escapes you. And so we need to look again.
With each listen, the album gives back something of Angelina Mango, of her voice, of her history and of her time: without remaining imprisoned in this period, Carame he knows how to tell it, he knows how to express our fears, the discomfort, the sense of inadequacy towards a world that wants us fit to exist here and now, without uncertainties, without flaws.
Caramé exists because Angelina Mango exists: the geography of pain (which leads to salvation)
I don’t know what pain Angelina Mango went through, but it doesn’t matter: you can feel it. The words are heard, but his pain – I repeat – is felt: it is violent, sharp, all-encompassing and, for all these reasons, profoundly true. Pure, I might add, in the most complete sense of the term: innocent, crystalline, never mild, never lukewarm.
So it makes sense (finally) to go back to talking about an album, because (finally, again) there is an concept: Carame it is not, as is increasingly the case, a playlist of songs in bulk, placed next to each other to collect streams. If anything, it is a project that has a common thread and a purpose: to investigate the geography of Angelina’s pain, reveal its darkest boundaries and return to the listener a record that is a road full of curves, spins, a map that leads to everyone’s intimacy.
Fifteen (plus one) beautiful songs, expertly written by those who have talent, but above all by those who have the courage, intelligence and freedom to reflect themselves in the music they sing: Carame she is Angelina Mango, but Angelina Mango is not (alone) Carame. This album is a trace of her passage, it’s what happened, what will remain, but Angelina, if she continues to take care of her talent and her truth, will be able to draw other maps, invent other bright hopes, survive trends. Angelina Mango is a beautiful hope.
The songs of Caramé
The songs of Carame they should all be listened to, one after the other, because a journey is made up of stages and each stage, in its own way, tells of a state of mind. However, I have chosen the five songs that I consider most significant.
Veil over the eyes
Text excerpt: Now how do I tell Angelina / She had to forgive herself, she became a murderer / She walks with rounded toes, forever, by default / And giving everything away is not receiving affection.
7up
Text excerpt: If I take up less space there is less pain / A vacuum package / As if they had sucked the love out of me / I’m not a star / Not even by mistake / I’m a freshman for life.
Ieio
Text excerpt: For a while now I have wanted to be anyone else / Or rather to be there, to be, to exist, now and not to hope to do so / Instead I associate existence with the violence of a birth / And my skin is a windshield / And my body is no longer a body / It is a clutter of space / A train that moves forward / A plate that I have leftover.
Aiaiai
Text excerpt: And I feel like I’m a ghost at my concert / Until you enlighten me / And there is nothing to illuminate / If the scaffolding collapses, only me remains / Please don’t judge me / Until you enlighten me / And there is nothing to illuminate / Where I end where you begin / You can’t see it in the dark anyway.
Igloos
Text excerpt: When you grow up you will understand / That all this shit made sense / You’ll understand how beautiful / I’d rather not understand anything / Beautiful and stupid / But in the present / It’s already Wednesday / Another tired week / One of those without anger / The ones that no longer hurt / Falling asleep on thorns / Like on the hospital bed / But what a pain when I bite my cheeks hard / When I stay apart from myself.
