Grilli, the new album from the group Alba

L’Alba released its sixth disc, Grilli, entirely conceived around a text by Ghjuvanfrancescu Mattei, around which the other members of the group let their imagination wander. The result, a dense and ambitious album, which confirms the thirst for freedom that Alba has demonstrated since its creation, almost twenty years ago.

Three years ago, Alba released its fifth album, At the beginning. A title which sounded like a new beginning for a group which has never hesitated to reinvent itself, sometimes taking daring paths.

Grilltheir latest record, confirms this thirst for creative freedom. Built around an original text, written by Ghjuvanfrancescu Mattei, it is a concept album mixing songs, pages, lullabies and stories, over 19 tracks, which form a whole of great strength and rare poetry.

“Alba is an old group of young people“, smiled Ghiuvanfrancescu Mattei. “The group has existed for around twenty years. We know why we make music, we know what we have to say, and we move forward like that. We want, of course, to touch people, but we couldn’t not offer music that we don’t like.

Where does the title of this new album come from? Grill ?
During the tour that followed the release of À Principiu, we toured to support the record, in Corsica and beyond, in France and Europe. We were on the road a lot, from one city to another, and we started to think about what happened next, through discussions. This is where I wrote the text I grilli.
It was inspired by the sound of the cricket, which for us is the soundtrack of nights in Corsica. It is also a temporal marker, almost, during the day, and even during the year. It’s a bit the same thing for us musicians, who make a lot of noise in summer, and much less in winter.

An air too cold For the crickets of July. In the looks, far away. For as long as we are not, All together, Those who desire the sun.

Alba

It’s an original starting point… How do you make a record out of it?
I gave I grilli to everyone in the group, and asked them to think about what it inspired them to do. To write a text, a melody… We are a group and we are aware that there is never a single point of view on the same situation. It was a good way to illustrate this way of thinking through creation.

Is there no risk, in these cases, of being frustrated, when you are the original author? The risk that others will take paths that we had not considered?
Surprise, yes. Frustration, no. And then, these proposals were only a stage, not a finality. We made choices, and it was then that the group’s work really began. We reappropriated what had been offered to us. It provokes endless discussions, but the path is always done collectively!

Grill is a real concept album, not just a record that embroiders around the same theme. The construction is very elaborate, there is real architecture…
We really wanted to tell something, each element of the record responds to another, echoes it, in a more or less obvious way. Ideally, you should listen to the album in order, the first time, in order to discover it as it was intended.

It’s inflated, in 2025…
It’s a bet, it’s true, going against current trends, with streaming, videos, random listening… However, we needed to go in this direction, and then we did confidence in listeners. For those who want to know more, there is the disc booklet, or the site, on which we offer the texts, the translations, and the keys to fully enter the work. But then nothing stops you from pecking. People will choose the songs they like, and they will live their own lives.

This Tuesday, January 14, you are playing at the Studio de l’Ermitage, in Paris, before a tour in Corsica and Europe, the dates of which will soon be known. How are you going to be faithful to Grillon stage?
We owe it to our audience to play the songs they expect, but we also think about how we could manage to not abandon the concept of the album. The concert should begin with the text that Natale Valli reads on Grillin order to put the show in that atmosphere. And then there will also be the musical subsets which define the different parts of the record, the one which refers to Corsican cabaret, the one which recalls the Orient, or even Africa…

From this point of view, your audience will not be disappointed. Once again, Alba’s music is strongly mixed…
The basis of Alba’s work is traditional singing and the Corsican language. But we always wanted to explore something else, while relying on this identity, this culture. We have freed ourselves, like other groups of our generation, but this is also the case in island literature, from the codes of the 20th century.

How do we manage not to be drowned out by all these influences?
We are vigilant on this subject. There is no question of being a group that will sing music from Mali in the Corsican language. The idea is more to immerse oneself in these Mediterranean musics, to merge them… Fado, Sufi music, Neapolitan music, have all their uniqueness, but they are not so different from paghjella . We are aware of these similarities, and we will flirt with them.
To, in the end, offer our own music.

Grill is on the platforms, it is available on CD, but a vinyl is also in preparation… Why?
We believe in the physical object. But we also wanted to thank the people who continue to buy records, at a time when so much music has become free. Inside the disc there will be a postcard, with a QR code, which will offer exclusive content, videos, songs that will not be on the vinyl, behind the scenes of the creation of Grill. And little by little, we will feed it.

Is the connection with the public more important than ever for artists?
Record sales today are no longer really a barometer. The way we consume music is no longer the same. But what doesn’t change is the relationship between an artist and his audience. Our audience follows us, is loyal to us, we saw it again with this evening’s concert in Paris, which is sold out. All of this really engages us.
People need music, they need live entertainment. And we must offer it to them, regularly. We are here to tell them a story. And it feels really good.
To write it, and to tell it.