Tonino Carotone is a bizarre, vaudevillian character, a Spanish singer/songwriter with a great affinity for Italian culture. He presents himself as a sort of Spanish/Italian Tom Waits, switching between the two languages song by song and playing Italian-esque arrangements. The album art to Ciao Mortali! is bizarre and somewhat off-putting, with Carotone sporting old-timey clothes and white face paint like a silent movie character and leering at the camera, as a woman poses seductively by a Gypsy wagon in the background. The music is quite good at times, though, mixing old-school sounds with (depending on the track) heavily reverbed surf guitar, female background vocals, organ, saxophone, thunderous percussion, and always witty lyrics in Spanish and Italian. Carotone has some hip friends, too, and they show up here to support him: Manu Chao, a superstar in Europe and South America, appears on the self-explanatory "Pornofutbol" and the hit single "Me Cago en el Amor," while New York-based "Gypsy punk" outfit Gogol Bordello show up on "Atapuerca," bringing a Balkan flavor to this otherwise Mediterranean album. He's too weird to ever be more than a cult phenomenon, but fans of world music as well as performers like Kid Creole, Tav Falco, and Tom Waits may well get a kick out of Tonino Carotone.
© Phil Freeman /TiVo