Review: EMMA NOLDE - "Nuovospaziotempo" (Track by track)

Emma Nolde invites us to enter a musical, dense, introspective, romantic, lived and everyday “new spacetime”.

The new album, the third of his career, is a journey, a personal portal that explores time as a subjective entity, and invites us to reflect on how our experience is changing and shaping the world we inhabit.

Emma definitively blossoms, fascinates, enters your heart and with these eleven songs she shows all her talent and her lyrical and musical ability.

“nuovospaziotempo” is the story of his journey which has as key words: change, love, freedom, questions and everyday life.
Each song is a window onto his generation, that youth that is often misunderstood as superficial, but which here is revealed in all its complexity. The “beautiful youth” that Emma represents is a generation capable of nurturing big dreams, but also tormented by profound questions, social and relational insecurities.

Emma sings about the need to create another vision of time and love (Point of view), as well as the anguish and difficulty “have you ever asked yourself whether you are more afraid of taking risks or afraid of staying” (Question mark) and also takes a leap back in time with a tender and moving poem-song-reflection dedicated to his father (Parallel Universe).

Even from a musical point of view the album dazzles. Intimate melodies that energetically intertwine with straight and powerful sounds in a fresh, innovative and contemporary composition.
The icing on the cake is the collaborations. Target and sip. The one with Nicolò Fabi is perfect, almost as if Emma were lyrically an heir of female Fabi and the one with Nayt and Mecna which shows Emma's versatility even in an urban environment.

Without a doubt one of the best Italian indie-pop albums of this year. Press play on “Nuovospaziotempo”, you won't regret it!

TRACK BY TRACK TOLD BY EMMA

1. Intro

I wrote this Intro imagining myself describing what is a normal day for me. It is in everyday life that my new spacetime is found, which is nothing interstellar. It is a new time because we live at a new speed; it is a new space because we now inhabit both the earthly and the virtual.

At the end of Intro I ask myself “Will we ever be happy? What will happen then?”, to then leave room for the second track, Svenireti, which I open by singing “And in ten years you will hear my name and pretend not to remember”. The Intro is the starting point, my present, which ends by opening the scene to questions about what will be.

2. Unknown

In Strangers I talk about the fact that often, as time passes, over the course of several years, many friendships and love relationships that I thought would last over time have changed a lot. They change so much that you go from sleeping in the same bed to not knowing whether to say hello or not on the street. It's a real fact; It's happened to me many times already, even in friendships.
Fans who have been following me for a long time will already know this song, because I took it with me on tour for a long time, before this master even existed.

3. Little by little!

In the first single Mai fermi I was talking to a child, in Tuttoscorre I talk about a couple, in Pianopiano! I'm talking about a group of people who live far from where things really happen. There are those who go to Milan, for example, to achieve their goals and this is beautiful; there are also many people, however, who out of love for the place where they are or, as in my case, out of fear of being influenced too much by places full of frenzy, make other choices. This is just me and my friends. “There are those who want to climb to the stars and there are those like us who prefer to look at them” is one of the key lines of this album. From where I am you can see the stars very well.

In addition to the places where a person chooses to put down roots, this song talks about deciding not to want a mechanical life, made up of home-work-home-television-bed-start again, and of wanting to be careful to leave some air in the days and weeks. To ensure that the choreography of the days always includes some different step that you didn't expect to take.

4. Sirens

“Tell him that you change for love, but you don't change who you love”.

Sirene is one of those songs for which I won't reveal the identity of the person to whom it is dedicated. It would reduce the listener's imagination and limit their vibrations.

Story of a person close to me who obeyed too much and all her life the wishes of her parents, who decided for her what life she should lead. This person is grown up now, but he still has a lot of time to start over and do everything he always had in mind. I can't wait until she can take over the steering of her car and take it where she wants, where even she didn't think she could get to. For now, I want to give her the certainty that she has always lacked, that is, that whatever happens, I will love her anyway.

5. Everything flows

Panta rei, everything flows and nothing is destined to stay anymore? It seems to me that there is a very widespread “disposable” attitude towards everything now, on clothes, on food, on objects that last a few months and then disappear, we'll buy more anyway. We have so many of them that in the end having them or not having them makes no difference to us anymore.

At least with human relationships I care about making things last. Whether in friendship or in love, it seems to me to be the only thing to really defend.

“Here's my word to you that I will try to save us, not throw us away like paper, to repair this story” with dedication, commitment and time.

6. Point of view

Niccolò Fabi is my answer every time someone asks me “who is your favorite singer-songwriter?”.
A sum of small things was the first album in Italian that took my breath away and made me fall in love, leading me to write music in Italian. I was fifteen and so, between me and him, even before he met me, a wonderful bond of trust had already formed. I was already his friend before I met him.

He came to one of my concerts at the Monk in Rome, two years ago. I felt a pang in my stomach. After the concert he came to me with the proposal to write a song together.

You can imagine my happiness.

After a couple of weeks I sent him an audio recorded on the phone of the first half of Punto di vista, in which I spoke to a very dear friend of mine who was too attached to patterns, to living life according to a pre-established routine, which he could never find time to hang out with me for too many tasks to fulfill. I felt a strong lack of his friendship. Niccolò asked me to talk to him about him and put himself in his shoes: when he sings, I exactly hear Marco, my friend, speaking and telling his story.

“I will build your bed in the air to make you see things from above, what scares you in the end is always just a point of view”.

7. Always the same story

This is the most fun song to play live on the entire album. It seems like it's about a relationship between two people, but that's not the case. It's another one of those songs that I won't impose limits on and everyone will listen with their own experience.

8. Question mark

Question mark was born unexpectedly. I had written a song and sent it to Nayt, we met in Rome to finish it and while we were there, I started playing the piano and he started singing “I never have a clue, so many questions”. We never finished the other song, a new one was born.

A few months later, I felt something was missing to really finish it and the only one I could see as perfect to close this song was Mecna.

For me, the two of them are two of the strongest songwriters of my generation, two artists who are more or less my age and who know how to give enormous weight to the words they use.

9. Parallel universe

I imagined meeting my dad when he was my age. One thing he always told me is “in this world there are no certainties, how can I advise you one path rather than another? How can I tell you that it would be good for you to go to university and study engineering if I'm not absolutely sure that this will lead you to a more stable future?”. Well, it is with this mentality that has always made me feel free to do what I like. In my case playing, making music. I would have liked someone to have said these things to him when he decided to stop playing the piano because university was the right thing to do. And I would have liked to tell him not to choose to marry someone so different from him. But I'm happy that it happened this way, otherwise we would never have met.

10. Never stop

Never Stop is a direct take on what surrounds me. I see something around me that isn't working, I see myself and the people I love going at supersonic speed that doesn't help anyone. I see red and tired eyes from the screens, I see trips to the beach canceled in favor of work because the deadline is always near. I see people in cars doing everything but driving so as not to miss a second of what's happening on their cell phone screens. But why? What is the purpose of all this?

I don't want a life like this, but I'm up to my neck in it.

I imagined telling all this to a child who doesn't yet know this reality. Thus was born Mai fermi, which as the first preview single of this album was the first human place explored on a much larger map.

11. 2

I recorded 2 with my phone, guitar and vocals. That audio track is what you hear on the record. I wanted to end it like this.

It is a record full of doubts, questions and fear of things to do, of the future and of the expectations that it carries within, but which ends with the discovery that all these doubts and questions are less burdensome if shared between two.

SCORE: Score 8.00

01 – Intro
02 – Unknown – Rating 8.00
03 – Slowly! – Rating 7.50
04 – Sirens – Rating 8.00
05 – Tuttoscorre – Rating 7.00
06 – Punto di vista (feat. Niccolò Fabi) – Rating 8.00
07 – Always the same story – Rating 7.50
08 – Question mark (feat. Nayt, Mecna) – Rating 8.00
09 – Parallel Universe – Rating 8.00
10 – Never stop – Rating 7.25
11 – 2