The distant, legendary past and the complicated present are never far apart in the songs of Carmen Consoli, a Sicilian songwriter who’s a superstar in Italy. On Thursday night she played to a club-sized crowd at Le Poisson Rouge. She sang about the myth of Narcissus and about plastic surgery. She also sang about politicians dallying with hookers and about being sexually abused by her uncle.
For an audience full of Italian fans singing along, it was a chance to hear her music on an unusually intimate scale, one that suits her recent musical shift. Ms. Consoli built her audience as a rocker and a pop singer, but in 2006 she released “Eva Contro Eva” (Universal Music Latino), a largely acoustic album incorporating Sicilian and Mediterranean folk instruments.
Her most recent album, “Elettra” (Wrasse), uses more standard rock instruments, but it retains a folky transparency, with undercurrents of traditional rhythms...
nytimes.com
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