Vernal Love is Italian singer and songwriter Sara Battaglini’s new project
A cross-cutting album, Vernal Love features six italian musicians (all from Tuscany) in a delicate electronic and acoustic sound fabric. Each composition, in an intimate yet dense mood, is suspended between lightness and bitterness, between what can be seen as dreamy and illogical in human vulnerability.
Focused on the idea of absence – not only as distance or lack of something, but also as a status, like “home” – it’s a vision of life inside and outside the bubble that keeps us both safe and in chains. It’s where we reach the farthest point from what surrounds us, and the deepest sensibility towards ourselves.
It’s a place where we all know and identify the bizarre and conflicting aspects of ourselves, where we taste the uncanny silence of perfection that makes every shade bright. It’s a hymn to balance, to love and hate, to bitterness and sweetness.
We spend our entire life hiding from a reality that we constantly try to reach. Again and again, we get out and then back in this haven that embraces us and wears us out, with no logic or distinction. We’re scared when we feel vulnerable, we’re scared when we feel free. It’s two levels, one in and one out, one above and one below. A border area where you can’t go either up or down – there’s only silence, made up of the screams that we forget.
Tracks and lyrics simply narrate points of view, different yet indivisible. With variable shapes, these seven dialogues describe total and pure love that knows how to give, but also how to take.
After releasing her debut album (Dalia) with her trio, and collaborating in such projects as Auanders’ Text(us), Sara Battaglini writes and arranges her new album for an extended lineup: the rhythm section includes Simone Graziano, Francesco Ponticelli, and Bernardo Guerra, while Beppe Scardino is on baritone sax and bass clarinet, and Jacopo Fagioli is on trumpet and flugelhorn.
With an eye on a captivating, layered sound that reveals electronic and acoustic elements, the entire album soundscape has been developed and carefully crafted in collaboration with Francesco Ponticelli.
1 Siren
2 Love Affair On The Moon
3 Birdcage
4 White
5 Am I Hysterical?
6 Dialogue
7 Eerie Day, For You
Sara Battaglini - vocals
Simone Graziano - piano, synth
Francesco Ponticelli - bass
Bernardo Guerra - drums
Beppe Scardino - baritone sax, bass clarinet
Jacopo Fagioli - trumpet, flugelhorn
Federico Pierantoni - trombone
recorded in October 2020 at Cicaleto (Arezzo) by Stefano Bechini
mixed by Francesco Ponticelli at Cicaleto (Arezzo)
mastered by Tommy Bianchi
produced by Francesco Ponticelli and Sara Battaglini
executive producer: Marco Valente
cover photo by Niccolò Chimenti
artwork and design by Vieri Cervelli Montel
