Pollio - Picking up the pieces of an explosion

We meet Fabrizio Pollio on the occasion of the release of his new album, “Dopo la bomba“. What follows is a pleasant conversation, spontaneous and never banal, about the past, present and future of music, both his own and that of the reality we find ourselves living in.

Your latest album, “Dopo la bomba”, arrives ten years after “Humus”, your solo debut. In between there's been a pandemic, major political and social changes, and for you, above all, a son - so major personal changes too. In light of this, would you consider “Dopo la bomba” more of an arrival point or a starting point?

In this case, and it's not just a figure of speech, it's exactly both. It's the arrival point of an evolution that began, as you said, with “Humus”. That title comes from the concept of “fertile ground”, and the final triggering event, which happened just before the album's release, was my father's death. That's why I called it that: humus is the fertile part of the soil, made up of what falls onto it once it has died. I felt I had to draw a lesson from that loss, and the album, which was already in the works and would remain so for a while longer - I recorded the vocals for “Generico”, if I'm not mistaken, about three days after the funeral - dug deep into that feeling. But I also knew it would take more time before I could completely "reinvent" myself as a solo artist after the end of the Io?Drama project. “Humus”, anyway, did well: I won Musicultura thanks to it, for instance. Meanwhile, together with Giuseppe Magnelli (guitarist, in the past, for the following bands: Grenouille, Arturo Fiesta Circo, Io?Drama and AIM, ed.), I kept writing. Especially before the pandemic, during 2019, he and I had a particularly productive period. We were very close, working side by side in the studio at his place in Brianza, working every day on many of the tracks that now make up “Dopo la bomba”. We were even about to release them, but then, unfortunately, Covid arrived. In those months we were playing “De André 2.0” live (an EP, credited to Pollio, reworking some of Faber's songs in a contemporary key, ed.) in Italy's major underground clubs, most of which were selling out, and the experience was proving to be a great success for us. With the lockdown, everything stopped, including our attempts to introduce the new songs to the public. Clearly it wasn't the right moment to release them, nor was it the right time to put out a song meant to remind people that my solo career was far from over. It was in that context that my son arrived, the big bomb: a bomb of happiness, a bomb of change...

So he's the “bomb” in the title!

One of the bombs, yes, because his birth, as you can imagine, truly upended my life from the very first second. It allowed me to find new energy, a new direction: it was him, with his first words, after just over a year of life, who reminded me what it deeply meant to be a musician. Before, I tended to "sit on" my songs, trying to find confirmation for the theory that if I couldn't manage to release anything, maybe it was because I wasn't really a musician after all. I had partly lost faith in myself, and it was thanks to him, who loved hearing me sing, that I found the strength to believe in music again. That was a huge bomb of happiness, amid all the less joyful ones: the pandemic, the wars... Events that upended everyone's balance. “Dopo la bomba” is therefore steeped in this too, in the tangle of real life and digital life that exists within each of us, in personal crises merging with collective ones. Nowadays, in fact, when you're feeling bad, you can no longer tell whether it's because of everyday problems or global ones: the two feed off each other.

I understand, that's a condition I've often found myself in too these past few years...

In other words, given how globally connected we are and the urgent challenges we face in the near future, we can no longer distinguish whether this general sense of unease stems from personal suffering somehow trying to find an outlet, or whether it's attributable to the current socio-geopolitical situation. From this point of view, and coming back to your opening question, “Dopo la bomba” can indeed be considered an arrival point. But it's also beyond question that, from the very first time I listened to it on Spotify from start to finish, and especially after playing it live in its entirety at ARCI Bellezza in Milan at the end of January, I realized that it actually marks a ground zero for my solo career. “Humus” is still valid to me personally, I expressed a lot of myself in it, but it lacks the fire that animates “Dopo la bomba”. It took a few years to get there, since I was coming straight out of the Io?Drama experience, and it was hard to invent an entirely new style in such a short time. Now I feel completely at ease in what we've created. It took a long time to get here, but I see good prospects ahead, so I'm sure it's a starting point as well.

Are you saying that before too long we'll get to hear some unreleased material bearing your name?

Yes! You didn't really think I'd only written seven songs, did you... (laughs, ed.)

The first bomb has been dropped, but there will be others, let's say...

Absolutely!

I think we can move on to the next question. Since you brought up Io?Drama, the next one is about exactly that: how much of that project is there in your new album? I'm asking especially given the musicians who played with you at Bellezza. As a spectator, I felt like I picked up on a kind of atmosphere similar to an actual reunion...

That's just an impression, really, because none of the "founding" members of Io?Drama are part of my solo project. There are, however, two important members who joined the band later on, after its formation, starting with Giuseppe Magnelli, who joined for the release of the last album, “Non resta che perdersi”. Before that he had other bands, which broke up, so we decided to join forces since we already knew each other. We started working closely together in Io?Drama, but over all these years we've actually mostly devoted ourselves either to my solo project or to other parallel ones, like “De André 2.0”.

The other former member is Davide Papa, who played bass live at Bellezza but has practically never worked on Io?Drama's studio albums. He's always been a well-known presence within the band's circle because he played the live shows and was a hugely enthusiastic personality, always breathing soul into whatever projects we carried forward. So I think this atmosphere of reunion that you picked up on was down to the sense of community we managed to conjure through our shared history. But in terms of actual members, the only former Io?Drama musician left is Giuseppe Magnelli, who contributed both to "Non resta che perdersi" and to the two solo albums I've released, "Humus" and "Dopo la bomba", as well as playing guitar on "De André 2.0" and on the singer-songwriter re-arrangements we bring to theatres. In terms of writing and style, though, while "Humus" still had some Io?Drama residue, with "Dopo la bomba" everything is completely new. I went back as much as possible to the Io?Drama approach to songwriting, from back when I hadn't yet released any albums: instinctive and free from outside conditioning, including the rule against using unconventional words. That's because after all these years my tastes have become more refined, and that freedom - so typical of Io?Drama - to write and play only what I like is the foundation of "Dopo la bomba".

And you're confirming that this freedom was less present in "Humus"...

At the time I thought I had it, but now I realise that for various reasons I still hadn't managed to fully pin it down. It was an artistic phase in which, among other variables, I also had to think about how to distinguish myself from the Fabrizio of Io?Drama. It was an issue the audience probably didn't even have in mind, and one that maybe wasn't even real, but it was something I grappled with every day. With "Dopo la bomba" I simply didn't have that problem anymore. I know I'm the Fabrizio of Io?Drama, and my musical past no longer stirs up any sense of inadequacy in me. It's part of how I write now, and surely one of the colours I use every so often comes from that experience: there's nothing to be ashamed of.

I actually noticed that the audience knows your Io?Drama history very well too, because when "Nel naufragio" started up at Bellezza, people got genuinely emotional. I'll move on to the next question, which is almost a cliché: what are the inspirations or influences behind "Dopo la bomba"? Are there any? Can you name them? And if you really want to go all out: what are your four desert-island albums?

Why wouldn't I reveal a few influences behind "Dopo la bomba"?

Maybe you're a little wary of comparisons, of someone lining you up against names too big to live up to and ending up trivialising your work...

On my part there's no reticence about it, given that all artists, even the greatest ones, have certain professionals in mind when writing, from whom they try to draw stylistic inspiration. With all the songs now available at the click of a button, you inevitably end up talking in terms of reference points.

You've convinced me! Go ahead then.

I should preface this by saying that for "Dopo la bomba" the influences were never declared, in the sense that you can hear them and I can even reveal them, but there was never a deliberate, conscious decision to draw inspiration from a particular artist. In technical terms this is called cryptomnesia: something you've internalised so deeply that you end up quoting it without realising you're doing so.

Fascinating...

Going back to your first question. Among Italian singer-songwriters, after years spent drawing inspiration from Fabrizio De André, Franco Battiato, Rino Gaetano and Lucio Battisti, I'm certain that on "Dopo la bomba" the one who lit the way for me more than anyone else was Lucio Dalla: there's definitely a bit of the Bolognese singer-songwriter in the arrangements. In the lyrics I followed his lead not so much in terms of actual words - I don't think he and I share the same kind of language - but rather for his courage in being light-hearted even while saying something complex. Or also for his need for poetry: Dalla brought back in me the desire to be poetic, in spite of everything and everyone. Stylistically, though, rather than in terms of actual songwriting, I can tell you there was an inspirational wave running from Hozier all the way up to the very recent Alex Warren - artists who are, admittedly, very mainstream. On one track we even decided to explicitly reference a specific genre, something I rarely do with Giuseppe Magnelli: "Igloo" indeed takes its first steps from the world of britpop, so you can hear traces of Blur as well as Radiohead, Beatles and David Bowie.

And what about the four desert-island albums, then?

That's a pretty hard question. I ask myself that a lot too, but then I always end up answering with whatever I'm listening to most at any given time. In my view, having only a handful of records to take to a desert island means you haven't been listening to music for very long, or at least that's the conclusion I've drawn from experience. For many years I wouldn't have had any doubts, but now I already feel like I've moved beyond that. Let's put it this way: one Radiohead album, just to be safe, is coming with me, and it could be either "Ok Computer" or "Kid A", even though "In Rainbows" and "Hail To The Thief" are actually my two favourites of theirs.

So why those two specifically, the 1997 one and the 2000 one?

"Ok Computer" and "Kid A" represent, respectively, the first and second part of Radiohead's career, during that blazing moment when they completely revolutionised the contemporary music scene, first in pop and then in alternative.

Clear! And I'd say I completely agree.

Then I'd probably bring “Anime salve” by De André, an album I find extremely evocative starting from the cover, with that little girl sitting, photographed in sepia…

And here too, I can't help but agree.

As a third title, I'd say any album by Ennio Morricone, something that's pure music, really. Even a compilation would do just fine, the New Year's Eve one for instance (laughs, ed.). I'll tell you the fourth one, if it comes to me, as we go on with the interview.

I can tell you the one we worked on the most, that is, the one I'd never have expected could become track number two on “Dopo la bomba”.

Perfect, go ahead.

“La percentuale”, that is, number two on the tracklist. I never expected it could be liked so much, both by us and by the audience, because it's the first song I started writing, yet at the same time it's the last one I finished: the last verse I wrote for this album is in fact the second verse of “La percentuale”.

Curious anecdote! Tell me more…

You should know that I don't write my songs in a “linear” way. A verse might date back to 2017 but only get released ten years later. Obviously, in between, I do a polishing job that brings everything to the same moment, but the original idea can have been born much earlier. “La percentuale” has a more tangled history than the other songs on the album. For example, “Mi sei mancata tanto” is a surge of feeling that came out all at once. “È solo una fase” has a very similar story: until recently, to your question, I would have answered that it was the song I was most attached to. But “La percentuale” is, to me, proof that sometimes a song needs to mature on its own, because its author isn't ready yet to accept it, until the two meet again during the process and it can finally be released.

Purely on a personal note, I can say that “La percentuale” is the most beautiful song on “Dopo la bomba”. I even listen to it on loop sometimes, because I find the message of the chorus, when you talk about “finally voting for yourself”, a brave and intimate moment of self-awareness.

I'm glad! “La percentuale” is the song with which I closed the album, because it really made me realize that we'd made it, that after about ten years we were finally back in the studio. I wrote that verse two days before recording it, because by then I understood that I wasn't sabotaging myself anymore and that I had to keep not doing so. What led me to do it all, to get back together with Giuseppe Magnelli and all the longtime collaborators, was the fact that I stopped procrastinating. At the same time, though, I felt I had done well to wait, so as to be completely convinced by the work done and be able to release it in peace. I wanted to be proud of “Dopo la bomba”. And since “La percentuale” is precisely about believing in yourself – I felt very down at certain points and I'm convinced many people felt the same way, unable to get projects they had in mind off the ground – in the end it became the most important song on the album, able to move even me, its author. It grew, among other things, in this world of ours made of numbers, where we're all interconnected and we all represent the percentage of something.

I agree, you could say it's the most topical song on the album, precisely because of the themes it deals with…

Maybe so: all I know is that it's true.

For me it definitely is. Next question: in the coming months, or in the near future in general, where can we find you, if we want to hear you play live?

After the show at the Bellezza, which we wanted to experience as a release party, we're trying to schedule the next shows. Some are already on the calendar, even though they haven't been announced yet, and they're actually quite important. Besides the ones with the full band, we're considering putting together some acoustic live shows, especially around the vinyl release in March, so we can present it as much as possible as flesh-and-blood people.

I asked you this question because right now there's a lot of talk about Artificial Intelligence, which is gaining more and more importance in the art world too. In particular, there's a theory going around that we'll go back to listening to live music much more willingly because we won't know whether what we're hearing on streaming was made by a human being or a machine. Do you agree with this view?

Partly. I think yes, we're heading in the direction of wanting to be there live more and more, but I don't think it'll be because we want to verify whether what we're listening to was made by humans or machines. I think that won't be an issue anymore.

Could you explain that better?

What I mean is that we're heading towards a world where our digital identity will be sold. Before long, I imagine, people will send voice messages inventing Pollio-style songs using my voice, and if I'm lucky I'll get some tiny royalty out of it.

Do you see that as inevitable?

We humans have fun however we can. The hope is that these digital identities will also correspond to physical reality, and that people will want to go see concerts live because, first and foremost, they want a real life. For instance, how many likes does it take to fill the relational time that you and I are covering right now with this interview?

That's actually hard to quantify...

A whole lifetime wouldn't be enough, of flame emojis and little hearts under comments, to make yourself understood that you care about someone. How many of those do you need to send to really build a relationship between people? I expect people to rediscover the pleasure of physically going to concerts to bridge this unbridgeable gap we have between excess connection and total emptiness of content, because we don't even know how to talk to each other anymore. I saw it at my own show: the crowd was happy. So yes, I expect a massive return to in-person presence, but not in order to check whether the artists are real or not. I don't think that will matter anymore, because the digital and the physical will be two parallel worlds, and in the digital world it will still be possible to certify our identity. People will go back to concerts because, at some point, it'll simply come down to a matter of detoxing from social media.

We've reached the end, and I'll dedicate the last question to our colleagues at OndaCinema. Earlier I asked you for your desert-island albums, now I'd like to ask you for your four favorite films, or at least the ones you consider essential both for your personal and professional development, and for the history of the Seventh Art. I'll ask you, if I may, "regardless of the numbers, regardless of the likes."

Absolutely! The first one is definitely "Fight Club". Both the book and the film, actually, because in my opinion this is one of those cases where the adaptation from page to screen was done brilliantly, helped along by a star-studded cast and David Fincher's direction. A similar example is "1900": Alessandro Baricco's story is only a few pages long, and Giuseppe Tornatore pulled a three-hour film out of it ("La leggenda del pianista sull'oceano"). That's exactly why it's so beautiful. Then, one among "Ladri di biciclette", "Umberto D." and "Sciuscià".

If I had to choose, I'd lean towards "Ladri di biciclette", because I was deeply moved by the mozzarella-in-carrozza scene. That moment between father and son has always touched me, just like the final scene, which portrays a certain kind of humanity and understanding of the social hardships of the time. Third: "La grande abbuffata". It moved me a lot from the very first viewing, then I kind of set it aside because, over time, I stopped seeking out that kind of extremism, but you see, it's come back to mind now after all these years. A fourth title could be "Favolacce".

That's a very recent film!

I found it wonderful, yes. To wrap up, I want to give a shout-out to a young director: Francesco Pividori, who directed "Bassifondi" from a screenplay written together with the D'Innocenzo brothers (the directors of "Favolacce", ed.). The director goes by a pseudonym, Trash Secco. My love for the last two films I mentioned comes from my appreciation, in art, of ruthlessness, brutality and rawness.

Thanks to Fabrizio Pollio for his availability, for the interesting food for thought that emerged during our conversation, and for the warmth he showed between one question and the next!

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google