7/10

Some albums are written during a concentrated burst of inspiration, while others gather slowly, collecting meaning as the person behind them changes. This is most certainly true of 'Rovine', the latest studio album from Milan-based songwriter Tulegon.

Its foundations stretch across more than twenty years, giving the record the unusual perspective of an artist looking at several versions of himself at once. Childhood observations sit beside adult understanding; old relationships are reconsidered through the distance of time; and places once regarded as permanent become settings in a much larger personal history.

That sense of movement is central to the album. Tulegon’s life has taken him from Ostuni in southern Italy to Rome and eventually Milan, and each city seems to occupy its own emotional temperature. Puglia carries the brightness and immediacy of youth. Rome introduces complexity, possibility and transition. And Milan becomes the place from which those earlier chapters can finally be examined with some clarity.

Yet 'Rovine' never feels like a straightforward autobiography. Tulegon is less interested in documenting events than in considering the traces they leave behind. A conversation, a departure or a seemingly ordinary moment can continue to shape someone long after its immediate significance has faded. The album repeatedly returns to that idea, treating memory as something fluid, selective and occasionally deceptive.

There are moments of tenderness throughout it, but the record isn't sentimental in a simplistic sense. Tulegon often undercuts emotion with irony, recognising that people rarely understand their own lives as clearly as they would like to believe. Love is presented as sustaining and destabilising. Destiny can appear meaningful one moment and absurd the next. Even the past, for all its emotional pull, is never offered as a safer place to hide.

'Rovine' is therefore less concerned with dramatic reinvention than with accumulation. It's the sound of years, cities and relationships settling into one body of work. Through careful writing and an understated sense of atmosphere, Tulegon creates an album that feels personal without becoming closed off, offering us space to recognise pieces of our own history within his.