Hard to find descriptors for the late Pino Mango’s Australia. Belonging to that then rare breed of solo art pop artists like Peter Gabriel, Laurie Anderson, and earlier pioneering ones like Eno (and others of that ilk), the sound of Australia is moody, complex yet accessible, and sometimes an entire world onto itself. Heavily indebted to the world of Lucio Battisti it does have something it lands on (at least for me): Balearic art pop for those seeking shade underneath a parasol, maybe? There were obvious roots to this 1985 release, though.
Mango, the nickname for one Giuseppe Mango, a native of the coastal village of Lagonegro in Potenza., began his music career in the mid ‘70s art schools of Rome, where (together with his brother) he befriended one Renato Zero. Like-minded brethren, they were into glam, prog, and heavy metal like many young guys of that era. Italian Canzone was coming of age and Mango, arguably, had a voice that many singers would kill for.
Blessed with a swooping octave range easily capable of going from high falsetto to basso profundo, the RCA label gave Mango his first opportunity to become a pop star. Although very dated, releases like La Mia Ragazza È Un Gran Caldo allowed him to explore his instincts as a legitimate songwriter who alongside his brother took vast more liberties in the studio than most of his other peers gunning for the charts. By 1982, Mango, unfortunately, settled into a frequently dispiriting cycle. As weirdly “pop” those earlier works were, no matter what label he recorded with nothing seemed to click with audiences. A year later Mango would quit the record business and go back to school, exploring a career in Sociology he put aside for this musical sojourn.
Blessed be then the day when Lucio Battisti’s brilliant longtime collaborator, Mogol, happened upon some demos of Mango and scuttled it out of Milan in the hopes of convincing Mango to rethink his retirement to come back and give it another try. A single, “Oro”, was recorded showing a fundamental shift in direction. Gone were the dated stylings of the past. Here were the large steps into future music perhaps gleaned from ambient pop, new wave, and Italian disco.
Trying to meet sophisticated ideas (a lot very influenced by soul music) with innovative lyricism and sonics, the single itself proved they had something to build off.
One listen to the flipside “Lungo Bacio Lungo Abbraccio” of the hit single “Oro” shows the intriguing moves. Far more driven by askew everything’s — samplers, drum machines, and synths — Mango finds a way to wrap his operatic, theatrical voice into something worthy of his tasteful restraint (which he wanted to showcase). Think of it as il divo out for a night out on the beaches of the Mediterranean.
And what a sashay it was.
Kicking off with “Australia” we hear light strains of tropical vocal pop that Isabelle Antena and Sade were mining. However, sonically, it appears the rise of Prince contributed something fierce to Mango’s welcome exploration of rhythmic soul music (with a un-Western tip). Somewhere the atmospheres of late ‘70s Eno also reared their head. It’s what would pay huge dividends on tracks like it which still sound remarkably ageless. It would be a style/side/craft he’d explore further with songs like “Nella Baia” and “Dove Andró” and later on albums like Adesso and Inseguendo L’Aquila on the album but this hit single saw him turn into that unlikely star of Sanremo with a song like “Il Viaggio” full of style unusually/rarely heard on that stage.
Australia, the album, sounds like it took ideas from world music and filtered them to whatever ruminative ideas Mango wanted to build atmospheres from. Songs like “Gente Comune In Evoluzione” tap into Mogol’s pioneering dreamy vision of latin music. Then in the span of less than 40 minutes, all the fascinating little side trips that Mango could conjure out of his battery of synths fall away, and Mogol could foment out of his lyricism, are tossed off to the side making room for that breathtaking, open-hearted voice, that finally found its triumphant visage somewhere around the Indian Ocean.