Lorenzo Gabanizza Releases New Single (feat. Jeff Christie)

Lorenzo Gabanizza’s varied experiences in the music world make him uniquely suited for his latest single “You’re Not There”. He’s recruited vocalist Jeff Christie to bring this new track to further life and the pairing of Gabanizza’s songwriting with Christie’s singing makes for a potent combination.

It is informed by his time with two different Queen cover acts, The Slightly Mad and Mantras, the latter of which he toured Europe with during his tenure. He went on to become a member of the Vic Elmes band Christie Again with whom he wrote the track “Meet Me at the River”, a key cut included on the album Christie Again: All the Hits and More.

He authored and produced his solo album Celtic Bridge in 2016 and the concept album experienced significant commercial and critical success. This incomplete summation of Gabanizza’s career thus far illustrates the difficulty you have assigning him a label. He has a foot in multiple genres. “You’re Not There” finds him working in the realm of pure pop ballads without ever seeming cookie-cutter.

The biggest difference maker there is the song’s topic. “You’re Not There” addresses the shortness of human life in a way you’ll be hard pressed to recall from other songs. It doesn’t use inflated language but, nonetheless, there’s poetic touch to the words elevating it above a well-phased collection of clichés set to music. The chorus will have an especially strong effect. There aren’t any laughable lines and you can’t help but applaud the bravery of wrestling with this within the confines of a pop song. It ends up being a fine vehicle.

Gabanizza uses saxophone and guitar very well. The presence of the horn in “You’re Not There” isn’t jarring, like it’s grafted on to satisfy some whim, and underlines the passionate emotions brewing beneath the song’s surface. The six string pushes some of the song’s best melodic passages forward and the production gives it weight without ever obscuring other parts of the song.

He definitely isn’t one of those musicians intent, each time out, on proving his skills to audiences. The songwriting and performance alike possess a naturalness close to breathing. It’s undoubtedly the product of long writing, revision, and rehearsal before hearing the song we have here. You can’t tell, however. Instead, “You’re Not There” sounds like it springs full-born from Gabanizza’s forehead and never hits a false note.

Such a connection is increasingly valuable. Societal forces everywhere are forcing art, in all its mediums, to kowtow to the forces of cultural relativism rather than embracing how craft can illuminate the human condition for good and ill. This song wants to create connections with its audience and briefly commune about life’s difficulties. Lorenzo Gabanizza definitely has the potential for building the sort of connections capable of sustaining careers and his new single “You’re Not There” goes a long way towards doing so. It’s a song you can grasp during the first hearing and continue hearing a little more with subsequent listens. He supplies plenty of reasons to keep you coming back for more and, for newcomers, will inspire you to seek out his earlier music. 

Michael Rand