Fast forward a year and the amazing Lorenzo Landini is back with a brand new record, Wins Above Replacement. The album sees Landini focus on sports, wringing every drop of metaphorical value from the theme to explore ideas of dreams, disappointment and disillusionment. Because what is sport but an exaggerated picture of the contradictions of modern living? Where people are made heroes, made villains, treated as performing robots and flattened into statistics? Games of money and numbers where human connection nevertheless flourishes.

Take opener ‘Coach’, which serves as both a thank you letter to the titular figure (“when I got knocked out / you were the first one there, you held my hand”) and a pledge to utilise the trust and confidence such figures inspire (“gonna keep trying to find my team / gonna keep trying to build a healthy routine / I’m gonna keep trying”). Though this earnestness is quickly followed by the wry ‘Rooting for the Earthquake’, which draws on the phrase Italians use when two football sides you dislike are playing against one another (i.e. Tottenham or Arsenal? I’m rooting for an earthquake) to capture the sensation of being stuck amid a collapsing world:

wouldn’t mind the comet
wouldn’t mind the horsemen
wouldn’t mind the inferno
wouldn’t mind blasts of ice
I am rooting for the earthquake
full time surely, ref
I’m ready for it to end

From here, Lorenzo Landini explodes the sport theme in scope and direction, leading casual fans into the ideas while providing plenty of references for the true heads too. “Heard you only sing when you’re winning / that’s no way to fan,” he sings on the self-deprecating ‘a loser (again)’, while ‘Incidental Contact’ plays to the whistle in its examination of love and guilt and the title track rails against both self-held perfectionism and the dehumanising capitalist gamification faced by athletes and artists both. “Categorize me, package me for consumption / I will defy the numbers on your screen,” as Landini sings. “My spirit will scream and break your machine.” Not that such passion is easily maintained, especially not in a dog-eat-dog world of competition where the brightest stars are teenagers. ‘Serena Fucking Williams’ confronts the frankly soul-destroying act of holding your own life up against the demi-gods of whatever field you call your own.

But even through this despondent mood runs a tangible playfulness. A new way of looking at things. An understanding of the rules of the game. This is the presiding spirit of Wins Above Replacement. An embrace of contradiction. Because, like sports, life can feel like a whole lot of suffering until those moments where it’s suddenly wonderful. And how that’s more than enough to fall in love with the whole thing. The conclusion of ‘not a loser (for a day)’, a song in part inspired by a visit to a friend in a mental health unit, serves as a summation of the entire album:

look I have no moral
and I’m sorry I talk about sports so much
they bring me joy
how can I bring you joy

Wins Above Replacement is out now and available from the amazing Lorenzo Landini Bandcamp page.

Artwork, graphics, and photography by Lara Atallah

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