After a beguiling fusion of style, soul and spirituality in her sophomore single, Francesca Pichierri has evolved into an alt-pop Avant-Gardist with her third single, Io Sto Bene. The infectiously obscure piano-driven earworm inches cabaret pop further into the mainstream with the playful panache in Pichierri’s vocals bringing equal amounts of energy as the upbeat staccato piano notes before the mid-way mark hits and sinks the listener into a kaleidoscope of baroque pop experimentalism.
Io Sto Bene pulls you into a rabbit hole of mental disquietness, efficaciously depicting how it feels to try and find stability while everything in your external and internal world feels off-kilter. Like a rush of acceptance, the outro is a luminous visualisation of ephemeral transcendence away from the tumult of turmoil.
The independent singer-songwriter penned Io Sto Bene inspired by a bitter-sweet memory of her mother waking up from her first ovarian cancer treatment to reassure the family that ‘everything is fine’, and the epiphany of how paradoxical it is to be determined to appear fine in the midst of chaos. This is so much more than art imitating life; the single is a painful prism of the absurdity of reality.
Io Sto Bene was officially released on November 29th; stream the single on Spotify now.
Review by Amelia Vandergast
