Look at the credits on the title track. Mogol and Peter Sinfield, on the same song. The man who wrote Italy’s greatest pop lyrics and the man who wrote the words to In the Court of the Crimson King, sharing a line on a record sleeve — because the song is Impressioni di settembre, rebuilt in English, and it is the reason this album is not simply the foreign edition of L’isola di niente. It is the twin with one extra organ. Several people who have heard both will tell you, quietly, that this is the better record.

The short version

Recorded between November 1973 and February 1974 at Advision in London and Fonorama in Milan, released in June 1974 on Manticore, six tracks, forty minutes, produced by the band with Claudio Fabi. Franco Mussida plays guitar and sings lead; Flavio Premoli plays keyboards; Mauro Pagani plays woodwinds and violin; Patrick Djivas plays bass; Franz Di Cioccio plays drums. Peter Sinfield wrote the English words. Five of the six tracks are L’isola di niente in a different language. The sixth is Impressioni di settembre, which is on neither of the Italian albums this material comes from, and it gives the album its name.

Not a translation

This has to be said plainly because it is what people get wrong: Sinfield did not translate anything, here or on Photos of Ghosts. He wrote completely new lyrics to the same music, and whether that is a betrayal or a gift is the oldest argument in the PFM literature. The clearest test case is the title track. In Italian it is Impressioni di settembre, dew and a September morning and Mogol’s words, the most famous thing Italian progressive rock produced. In English it is something else entirely — and it works, ebbing from quiet introspection into enormous symphonic release in a way that puts it next to early King Crimson rather than next to Italian pop. Mogol keeps his credit. Sinfield gets his. The song survives both of them.

The sound

The same album as L’isola di niente, which means the most complex and jazz-inflected music PFM had made, and the arrival of Patrick Djivas out of Area. Contemporary reviewers noticed him immediately: he brings a jazz approach to the bass and a louder, harder sound, and that in turn toughens Di Cioccio behind him. What is different is the singing. Mussida sings this in English with an Italian accent, and instead of undermining it, it gives the whole thing an air that no English band could counterfeit — operatic embellishments and arrangements that could only have come from Italy, wrapped around art-rock proficiency. The received wisdom, and it holds up, is that side one is the stronger side and always was.

The songs

The map first. The Mountain is L’isola di niente: ten and a half minutes, opening on an opulent choir, moving through passages of graceful melody and deliberately ugly power, and holding together despite a length that a firmer producer might have trimmed. Just Look Away is Dolcissima Maria — soft, atmospheric, with echoes of I Talk to the Wind and a flute melody at the close that Steve Hackett would have been glad of. The World Became the World is Impressioni di settembre and the minor masterpiece here. Four Holes in the Ground is La luna nuova: a folky jig with a honking synthesizer on top, closer to Jethro Tull than anything else PFM did, and it became a live staple for decades. Is My Face on Straight was in English already. Have Your Cake and Beat It is Via Lumiere, and it ends the album on an unexpectedly Beatle-ish note.

Reception and legacy

This is the record that took PFM to their high-water mark abroad. The American tour that followed produced the live album Cook, which spent eight weeks on the Billboard 200 and reached number 154 in January 1975 — better than any Italian rock album had managed. In February 1975 they played NBC’s Midnight Special to the largest American audience they ever had. Then came Chocolate Kings and the singer and the arguments. Among English-speaking listeners this album, not Storia di un minuto, is often the one held up as the Italian progressive masterpiece, which says more about distribution than about music. It is still where a great many people came in.

The verdict

Essential, and genuinely worth owning alongside the Italian version rather than instead of it. If you have L’isola di niente you have this album’s music, minus its best track; if you have this you have Sinfield’s poetry and none of Pagani’s. Play the title track and then Four Holes in the Ground. Then L’isola di niente for the same record in its own language, and Photos of Ghosts for the first pass at the same trick. Two lyricists, two languages, one September morning. It should not work twice. It does.

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