At first is the cover. 
 As soon as I had the news of the publication of this album I ran to buy it and the cover touched me immediately:  "But that one is the daughter" I thought  .. I have not never had the certainty that that child who throws herself on the neck of Angelo, and that sure was laughing, was effectively one of the daughters, I have to say that, some year later,  in Rome, in exposition: "History of the Italian song", was exposed a photo that seemed, indeed probably it  was, the sequence, the successive shot of that photo of the cover of "Pane e rose" with a beautiful and smiling face , and at the bottom: "  Angelo and Maddalena ". 
It' s the very first disc of the famous, or ill-famed, "minimalist period" of Branduardi. 
It begins  with a not really easy song:  "L'albero".   Listening to it I thought :  "mah..."

I must be sincere:  in that disc my first impression was that for me Angelo was not recognizable, the voice was not even the same one:  if you noticed well, he sings in different way, now I do not know the technical terms, but the voice is set up in various way, therefore like for successive "the ladro". 
But this is also a sincere disc. 
 A little timid, and discreet, sure much brave one in a period like that one, where the  "look" and appearing at all costs was the ordinary. 
 A song of this album is :  "Angelina". 
I try to translate it: 

 

Poor Angelina, you  made a colorful silk dressing.  ..
for dancing. 

 

Poor Angelina, you have washed the hairs that smells  of gelsomino...
for dancing.

 

When the evening will come, you you will go singing

towards the lights that you see on the high of the hill

and walking , laughing, Angelina, you will dance ... carnival. 

 

Poor Angelina, you have painted the lips of red coral.  ..
for dancing. 

 

Poor Angelina, tightening to you someone will say that you are  beautiful ...
carnival. 

 

When the evening comes, you you will go  dancing

towards some people who sing on the seaside,

for a long, tender night, Angelina, you will dance.  .. carnival

 

(Luisa Branduardi )

 

Great verses, they give me that thin "sense of incomplete".  ..
That "ordinary quiet" in which all it goes as a precise outlines, all previewed, all deliberate, also in what the Carnival would have to be, a moment of freedom. And in the malaise that was begun to perceive above all of those years, in which the conformism of mass  took to the windward on "individualism" and therefore on just the way to be.   In fact, never as in those years it was more important "to appear" or "to have" that "being".   Therefore all false, not sincere, also the compliment of someone who will tell her she is beautiful.  .. Poor Angelina. 
The presence of Pietra Montecorvino surprised me. a singer that already I knew and I appreciated, thanks to Eugenio Bennato.   "Tango" reminds me the famous dance for its sensuality, but with  the text that seems ironic to me at same time. 

Surely, between the albums of Angelo, this is the most "Mediterranean".   I have always thought that Branduardi has been stopped just a  little ( musically , i mean) near my land, is true that it has sung Neapolitan but his sounds are more north european.
In this disc instead we find  rhythms Africans and South Americans (Miracolo a Goiania, Barbablù, Frutta.  ..Sonority that, i'm sure, Angelo will resume...Who knows....Perhaps in Future Antico III ?:) 

Michelangelo