Duo Bucolico celebrate twenty years with the effervescent Champagne!

Italian alternative songwriting duo Duo Bucolico release Champagne! on 10 May, marking their tenth album and roughly twenty years of music, mischief and offbeat songcraft. The Rimini-based pair describe the album as a kind of celebration, but not in a glossy pop-star sense. Champagne! feels like a toast to endurance, absurdity, aging, friendship and the strange dignity of staying playfully unserious for a very long time.

The album’s Italian notes frame it as an effervescent, precious and almost institutional release, while also embracing contradiction: wisdom and naivety, old age and idealism, cunning and healthy stupidity. That is a very useful way to understand the project. Duo Bucolico make alternative music that treats humor as a serious tool, not a gimmick.

The tracklist includes L’Eterno Ritorno, L’Ingorgo, La Transenna, Meglio Tardi Che Mai, Mano Ciao, I’m Centenario and Il Genio Dello Xanax, all of which suggest theatrical, satirical and slightly surreal storytelling. For an indie digest, Champagne! adds a very European flavor to the day: part songwriter tradition, part punk irony, part village festival after too much sparkling wine. Stream/buy: https://duobucolico.bandcamp.com/album/champagne