Brunori Sas

The venue is small, all wood and huge blown-up photos of rock gurus. Downstairs people are already crowding in front of the stage, and upstairs there are almost a hundred of them. Dario Brunori pops up with a glass of red wine in hand and the amused air of someone who doesn't seem to take himself too seriously. Things will change, maybe, and maybe soon too, but for now that's how it is. Things will change because a few months ago the guy put out a record that, over the course of a summer, became a massive hit, and now his name is on everyone's lips. The critics rave about it, the internet raves about it, he's asked to play gigs in every corner of Italy. So much for the beach at Guardia Piemontese…

Over the past few years the Loop Café — part bar, part underground club, tucked between the alleys and steep stairways that wind down from the top of Perugia's old town — has hosted the best names in Italian indie, but packing it out like this on a Wednesday night is no small feat. Brunori is playing a bit of a home game, it's true, since the Calabrian community in the city is large and particularly proud of its identity: tonight the front rows are entirely theirs.

For this reason too, the gig by Brunori Sas and his general partners is a small sociological snapshot that entertains everyone — musicians, hardcore fans and casual onlookers alike. There are four of them on stage, because today the drummer had to head back down to Calabria to sort out some business, and you immediately wonder what kind of show it will be without anyone keeping time from the back. The line-up is genuinely quirky, to be honest: Dario grips the guitar, to his left his partner-lover Simona Marrazzo handles the backing vocals and shakes the odd bit of percussion, to his right Mirko Onoprio is locked onto his tenor sax. Someone is behind them too, and it could only be Dario Della Rossa, who, when he's not blowing into the melodica, mans the keyboards. It's him, unsurprisingly, who gets stuck playing metronome tonight, hammering away with real conviction on the lowest keys.

The bottle of wine standing tall next to Brunori's microphone empties out slowly, while the three guys' glasses swing back and forth between red and empty. The frontman immediately turns it into a joke, opening with "Nanà" and the Baustelle-esque "Italian Dandy", before the quartet pulls out what will turn out to be the best, toughest song of the night. It's "Paolo", a tender, easygoing ballad that will also do nicely as an encore. Then come all the other tracks from "Vol. Uno", the album Pippola Music put out last June, which also bears the mark — arrangement and mixing — of Matteo Zanobini, who together with Brunori made up two thirds of the now-defunct Plume. The crowd laps it up, a couple of fired-up Calabrian girls launch into the chorus of "L'imprenditore" in unison, throwing off the tonal balance of their fellow countryman frontman, who reacts more startled than embarrassed. The side effects of fame. Brunori hasn't got used to it yet, and it shows. Every now and then a word comes out garbled from his mouth, on guitar he does his job and nothing more. But his voice holds up, Rino Gaetano isn't a ghost here but a forefather, and the chemistry with the rest of the band is excellent. There's something clumsy that works tremendously well in these four friends making music together, all of them bespectacled or nearly so, all likeable, all in sync.

But the album only has nine songs, and a show can't last just half an hour, so good old Brunori pulls out three notable unreleased tracks and a stunning cover of "El Diablo". Brunori Sas and Litfiba, yes. A hugely successful pairing. When it's time for "Guardia '82" the large Calabrian contingent naturally erupts in genuine celebration, but everyone in the room who knows it, who knows the words, sings along. They can't help themselves. It's a party, among worked-up out-of-town students and thirty-somethings transplanted elsewhere and full of nostalgia. It's a party that will keep going around Italy for quite a while yet. And come February, it's official now, the baptism of fire at Circolo degli Artisti in Rome. We'll be hearing a lot more from this Brunori.

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