Dente - A bite out of the Italian indie scene

Point one. This is Dente's year: he's the one, a thirty-three-year-old from Fidenza, the breakout name in Italian independent music. Independent in the strictest sense, mind you, because Dente has been through every circle of the indie inferno: from a four-track recorder in his bedroom, to the penniless Jestrai Records, all the way to his recent landing at Ghost, one of the most important independent labels in the country. But what does it really mean, in the real world, to be the singer everyone's talking about? What is the true scale of Dente's success?

Point two: Dente is a singer-songwriter in the classic sense: all his songs are built on acoustic guitar chords, all his lyrics are autobiographical. Ultimately, this is his greatest strength – the element that has brought him this far and could allow him to broaden his fame even further – and at the same time his weak point: it leaves him wide open to accusations of banality, servility, traditionalism, tedium. What's more, in that fishbowl of bohemian emo-intellectuals that Italian music on the independent circuit seems to have become today, it's very easy to be branded as someone who's just playing a part, putting on an act, full of himself. All it takes is bouncing off a little interview, landing in Vanity Fair, having a vaguely arty photo taken. In the credits of his latest album “Love Isn't Beautiful”, it says that all the songs are credited to Giuseppe Peveri, “Dente for short”. Not “stage name”, but “for short”, as if Dente weren't a persona, but he and Giuseppe were one and the same person. But how true is this? How “real” is Dente?

Taking advantage of his Desio concert, I decided to get these two points clarified directly by him.

Since 2006 you've made 3 albums and an Ep. How did they do, sales-wise?

They did well, unexpectedly… I mean, records just don't sell anymore, as you know. This last one especially ("L’amore non è bello," ed. note) did well, because it got more promotion, more visibility. My first record ("Anice in bocca," 2006, ed. note) is sold out, but only 300 copies were pressed, it was sold at shows and wasn't even distributed. "Non c’è due senza te" (2007, ed. note) did quite well, even though there was no machine behind it promoting it. It made its way on its own, and I think it still sold more than a thousand copies. The Ep ("The Things That Matter," 2008, ed. note) had a run of about 3000 copies, but it was free to download. I made it together with Enrico Gabrielli, Roberto Dellera and Enzo Cimino (drummer of Mariposa, who recorded and mixed the whole thing), recorded among friends at the Mariposa's studio. It cost me nothing, so I didn't feel right about selling it. This record here ("L’amore non è bello," ed. note) is selling far more than the others, I think it's tripled the sales of "Non c’è due senza te."

Can you make a living selling records, or would you at least like to be able to?

No, absolutely not, these days you only make money from live shows. Sure, I'd love to make a living making records, but I also love playing live. The thing is that sales volumes these days are just too low to earn a living from sales alone. Just think, nowadays selling 5000 copies is a huge achievement, but with an artist's royalties on those sales you couldn't even cover your grocery bill. There was a time when piracy wasn't within everyone's reach and people bought records… I don't think even Ramazzotti manages to sell 500,000 copies anymore. Even the thresholds for gold and platinum records have come down!

"L’amore non è bello" is doing especially well also because it's been promoted much better: now you have a label that's far more attentive to promotion, a press office, an agency handling your booking, basically you've moved up to another level.

Fortunately, yes, "L’amore non è bello" is a step up both in the songwriting and as an "object," technically speaking. It's definitely a better-recorded "product," especially compared to the other records, which were recorded in a fairly raw way. I'd always wanted to record an album in a studio, but I just didn't have the means, so I made do with doing everything at home. This time we managed to get into a studio, and I finally got rid of this "ghost" of recording an album in a studio, working with musicians who, among other things, also contributed to the arrangements. We spent 15 days in the studio arranging all these songs, and they had a hand in it too.

Your songs are always very "sincere," very autobiographical. As you become more popular, is it harder for you to be yourself?

No, I really don't think so. Also because it's not like I'm some huge star. Sure, I'm more famous than I was two years ago, but it's not like my life has changed.

Actually I wasn't just referring to success, but to the gap between you as a person, as a singer-songwriter, and the persona who gets up on stage. When you're a nobody it's very easy to be yourself, but now I see you do have an image: the poster for the show shows you as a kind of St. Francis charming the animals of the forest…

Honestly I don't pay much attention to these things, I just do things as they come to me. The photo on the poster was my idea, I liked the idea of playing St. Francis and it seemed good for the poster, since it conveys this idea of drawing people towards you, with a sort of "come unto me" message. But it's just something like that, I don't think much about the image I give people, also because if I start thinking about these things, it's all over.

So you're just yourself, plain and simple.

Yes, I feel like I did 10 years ago. Sure, what's changed is that I now know a lot more people and a lot more people know me, and it's a bit annoying that some people take liberties just because you're up on a stage. You know, this whole thing with the new (hateful) means of communication plays a part too, because people feel much closer to the artist than they used to. Just think, only 15, 20 years ago, to find out if there was a show you'd call the venue, now people write directly to you, they send you a message on Myspace or Facebook… It's not that this bothers me, but, for example, I would never in a million years have allowed myself to write something like that to Emidio Clementi! As a result, people interpret the relationship as if it were almost friendship, so they come up to you and pat you on the shoulder. It's not that I want to act superior (because I'm not), but I don't know you, I mean, you and I aren't friends! And that's something that bothers me a bit about small-scale popularity.

"Beato Me" (included on the compilation "Il paese è reale," ed. note) is different from the "Dente style," not just in the arrangement, but also in the lyrics, which I find particularly cryptic, could you explain it to me?

This song is the first non-autobiographical song I've written, it wanted to point out certain behaviours of men towards women, you know, that somewhat mean, heavy, use-and-discard attitude. I'm not very used to writing this kind of song, but I tried to put this idea down, it was among the candidates for the last album but then it got set aside because it wasn't finished, especially the lyrics. Then they asked me to do a track for "Il paese è reale" and I dug this one back up, I rearranged it knowing it would go on that record, not one of mine, so in a more aggressive way. The way I worked was different too, and it was quite a challenge for me to finish a song within two days, since I'm really not used to working with deadlines, and I'm very happy with the result.

Another song that stands a bit apart from the rest is "La presunta santità di Irene," which lends itself very well to a game of references. The sound is straight out of late-seventies Battisti, but the structure is unusual, with this very long musical theme, the (few) words halfway through, and an ending that's always long and instrumental, almost Paolo Conte-like!

That song was the first one I started working on for the record, though it turned out to be the most different and the most disconnected from the rest, definitely because it has this long instrumental section that isn't really "me". For this record I knew I'd be playing with other musicians, so there would be a lot more music and a lot more "fullness", but I didn't want to overdo it with the instrumental parts, because I wanted the songs themselves to remain the focus, so the lyrics and the melody. I didn't want to "stuff" them too much. This musical opening is very reminiscent of "Abbraciami Abbracciali Abbracciati", which is the opening track of Lucio Battisti's Anima Latina, a record I adore, and yes, it was meant as a direct reference.

Actually I don't know exactly why people bring up Battisti, or rather, I too hear a bit of Battisti in there, but that's because I love him enormously and he's influenced what I do a great deal. But the lyrics are different, because thankfully I'm not Mogol, and the voice is different too... I don't know, maybe some of the melodies I write can bring to mind certain Battisti songs.

And what about Ivan Graziani and Enzo Carella (especially the records he made in the '70s with Pasquale Panella as lyricist) - how do you see yourself in relation to them?

Unfortunately I don't know their work. But I really like Panella.

Would you write for other artists?

Yes, definitely. It hasn't happened yet, but if I wrote songs I didn't want to sing myself, I'd happily give them to someone else.

The customary final question: what will you be doing in the coming months, and are you recording anything new?

I'm not thinking about new tracks for now. Right now I'll be carrying on with this tour through September-October, and then the idea was to do about ten dates with a completely different setlist and sound. I'd like to find some more carefully chosen venues where I can play songs I can't perform at summer festivals - the more intimate ones, for instance.

Like secret concerts?

Well, secret concerts are a different thing altogether, because there I do a bit of everything, I act the fool, I do cabaret, it's more "we're friends and we're playing guitar" style. What I wanted instead was to actually put together a show with the band with a different set of songs, like "Solo andata", which I never play because I find it doesn't really work in this current set. Something a bit more seated, more theatre-like, to be a little more serious.

Dente gives me a few more details: for instance, that "Anice in bocca" came out so "nasty" (track two is called "Io della bellezza non me ne faccio un cazzo") because he'd just broken up with a girl and was pretty angry. The funny thing is that the home recording makes the song fragments that make up "Anice in bocca" even more bitter and "acidic", with a nice contrast between the words and Dente's honeyed voice ("ti farò venire i lividi/ con gli occhi chiusi vedrai molto più di così").

I point out to him that all his lyrics run along an I/you dichotomy, especially in "No One Like You" (“com’era bella/ la moglie del tuo amante/ sei stata ingenua/ col telefono stacci più attenta”, "che begli occhi che hai/ chissà come mi vedi bene"), and he's genuinely surprised, answering with a smile: "Really?"

Honestly, live he's good, in tune with his musicians, and he's also a decent entertainer who defuses the flatter moments with a dry humor that gets extra comic mileage out of his involuntary Fidenza-accented weak "r". At encore time, someone asks him to play "Verde", a song written by Federico Fiumani and covered by Dente on the Diaframma tribute album "Il dono" (2008). As he sings it, he twists it, "Dente-fies" it even in meaning, turning it into a breezy (and amusingly nonsensical) love song. Some people are thrilled, others turn up their noses: how annoying, this Dente with his image of the awkward, romantic loser. Which he is.

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