The French Saints know. But they don't have the proof. Being artists, however, and to paraphrase Pier Paolo Pasolini, with the instinct of their profession they feel that “We are all in danger”, as the intellectual killed in 1975 at the Idroscalo of Ostia warned us in the title of the last interview. And even Alessandro De Santis and Mario Lorenzo Francese confess to us today: I'm afraid of everything. As in the first single from the new EP out on November 8th where they sing “I'm afraid of everything / Of everything I know” and where the famous invective “I know. But I don't have proof.”
What is so disturbing about this hard pop duo? For example, “that happiness and well-being are two conditions that are completely separate from each other.” Yet, submerged by an enormous amount of information that we receive every day – which we could very well do without – not only do we forget it, but we risk losing sensitivity towards ourselves, those around us and the world around us. Does this seem like little to you?
Not surprisingly, in the six tracks of the new EP It may have no weight they invite us to rediscover the humanity that, due to overexposure to technology, we are losing. But don't expect songs of denunciation (at least not explicitly) or slogans that can be used on social media (which they haven't had for some time). Because the French Saints, at most, will push you to react to a malaise that many people ultimately feel and to which everyone can respond in their own way. In this interview, they explained to us how they did it: «We picked up the instruments we used when we were 15 and made them play as loudly as possible while shouting like crazy».
Listening to your EP I had the feeling that you try to escape from any explicit meaning, favoring instead the signifier. That is, a sort of mental representation originating from music and text. Did I dream or is there any truth to it?
Alessandro De Santis: In general yes, we have never had the tendency to want to become flags for something. Also because of an insecurity that we both have. And then because, as the years go by, we are realizing more and more that we have the right to talk only about what we experience. It's clear that music, once you write it and publish it, conveys messages. But it is also important to understand that it is an investigation that we carry out within ourselves. From X Factor onwards our agenda was very busy and there were few moments of silence. But we desire them, because if you don't experience something you can't write about it. Or at least, you can do it but the songs come out forced, without research.
I'll make a digression before returning to the EP, given that you have experienced more or less the same path as Aura and Marilyn who, after their elimination from Bootcamp X Factorthey said that «independent music is dead and Manuel Agnelli killed it». I also asked Fast Animals and Slow Kids and for them it was more a question of what indie was and has become. For you?
Alexander: These are such unique experiences that it is difficult to generalize. It went well for us. We had fun, we were respected musically and humanly. Also because we didn't have great expectations, we experience such occasions as showcases to make our songs heard, there's not much else. It is important to face a talent at the right time in your life. If you are very young there is a risk of taking certain things too personally. It's also true that when you leave a talent show you want to kill everyone.
Mario French: I don't know if indie is dead, it's certainly changed. Now it has become a genre, whereas before it was an adjective. It no longer has the same meaning as a few years ago, when Ale and I went to listen to Calcutta among 30 other people and we didn't know who he was. As we often say, perhaps new sounds and new styles should be sought and music should try to go back to indie.
There is also another trend: after achieving success, very young artists feel forced to take a break, from Alfa to Lorenzo Fragola and up to Sangiovanni.
Alexander: The point is not to get to the point where you have to take a break. We've been working on it for years. We want to go home at night, look in the mirror and not have to turn away in disgust. But I find it normal to take breaks. Until a few years ago the artist did this: he wrote, went on tour and then stopped. If you set up your work in this way, with breaks decided by you and not because you're no longer in it, you never end up having to take them. If there's a little less music coming out on Fridays it's not a big deal. Let's all stop to breathe.
Returning to the EP, in the single that preceded it, I'm afraid of everythingI heard some reverberations of the last interview with Pier Paolo Pasolini by Furio Colombo, which was entitled
“We are all in danger.” Sing: “I'm afraid of everything / everything I know.” Which sounds a bit like the famous: “I know. But I don't have proof.” Am I making it too big?
Alexander: We thank you for making it so big, because it's a beautiful parallel. “We are all in danger” is a perfect translation of “I'm afraid of everything”. This is partly what we want to say. There is danger around that is scary and in our case it made us pick up the instruments we used when we were 15 and make us play them as loudly as possible while shouting like crazy people. This was our reaction. The song, like everything we have produced, comes from a sense of malaise. Simply from when we open our eyes and receive all the inputs that come to us from the outside.
Do they reach you even if you are no longer on social media?
Alexander: Yes, I haven't been here for a year, but I get 90% of the things that pass on social media, either because they send them to me by other means or because they talk to me about it. But in the bridge we write: “And thank goodness / I'm afraid of staying sad”. We want to say that if you are afraid, you must stay calm, it is absolutely normal when you are 20 years old and have a minimum of sensitivity. Then everyone finds a way to vent it. We do it by playing.
Is fear a bit like boredom, to which you have dedicated a song in the past?
Alexander: Absolutely yes. It's proof that you still feel something. That anxiety that all 20-year-olds feel and which can lead to depression, which is a condition in which you stop feeling everything. As long as you have a fear that keeps you awake and alert, it's best to exploit it.
Isn't it a little strange, when you think about it, that technology that was developed to make us feel better is instead triggering adverse reactions?
Alexander: We are probably discovering how happiness and well-being are two conditions completely separate from each other. You can have all the advantages in the world and still feel like an idiot when you go to sleep at night.
Mario: Artificial intelligence is a tool created to make us less afraid in sectors such as medicine or science. We know more and more things and we do them more and more precisely. But when you move on to artistic production everything becomes very strange and even a little scary. Much of what we tell in It may have no weight it derives largely from that world. From the enormous amount of information we come into contact with every day that we don't need to know. You can no longer concentrate on yourself and you get bored by not thinking about anything. There's nothing redeeming about it.
Is this also why thinking that “it might not matter” is a way to free yourself from such a burden?
Alexander: We travel often and when you come into contact with nature, you realize how small you are, how little what you do in this larger mechanism matters. It's a release of responsibility that gives you peace. Lack of desire is the point at which, paradoxically, you are most human.
And i Cats of the song?
Alexander: They help us a lot. Every now and then I'm at home with my cat and in some moments of sadness I look at him: he, unlike me, isn't asking himself any questions, yet he's very happy. We should imitate them more.
This is an EP that, you can feel, is very “physical”. How did you physically realize it?
Mario: We took the guitars and played them really hard. Not in Milan, but in a small house near Parma, creating a serene and super quiet environment. Without distractions. We called the drummer Daniel Fasano and in that situation, starting from pieces that had been born months before, we decided to close them all in that week and in that condition. Once these conditions were created, everything else came very naturally. Without setting particular objectives, other than finalizing the pieces as best as possible.
Alexander: We both come from rock, so for us it was like coming home. A scene that we liked as children, but that over time we had lost sight of. In fact, it's true that we look back to the 90s and 2000s, because our ratings come from there.
More and more often I meet musicians who decide to go back to analogue or to play all together in the studio and no longer remotely. Perhaps artists, like litmus tests, interpret this malaise towards technology?
Alexander: From the outside it might seem naive but instead there is something more true in a harmonic progression with a vocal line built on a piano and a guitar above it, compared to sounds built on a digital level. Until there is technology that allows us to have sounds that are truly different, that a human being hasn't heard yet, we're all for playing with guitar, bass, drums and piano.
Before the release of the EP you stated: «These songs ask for calm, kindness and respect, and like all music, they ask to be listened to. Until the end”. Do you know that you are completely out of any trend?
Alexander: Are you saying we're shooting ourselves in the foot? And you're right, but unfortunately he's stronger than us. We cannot conform to any type of structure that would not allow us to look in the mirror when we return home. In an era in which there is a lot of violence around and therefore an incredible amount of information on violence, it would be nice to reclaim our sensitivity, which we see as increasingly anesthetized. It would be nice to go back to closeness, to talking to each other, to listening to each other, to being kind. And to trust, above all.
Who should we trust more?
Alexander: Both the artists' audience and the artists' audience. Too often, unfortunately, music is written with the idea that the public is not able to understand it.
Photo: Simone Biavati
These six songs have a particular live vocation. What have you prepared for the tour, which will start on the 20th from the Teatro della Concordia in Venaria Reale, near Turin?
Mario: We are preparing the live lineup and we will certainly have a new lineup. There will be four of us, until now there have always been three of us. But this EP is played a lot and required the presence of another guitarist, Domiziano Luisetti. For the rest, we will make all the pieces of our albums and covers different than in the past.
Before closing, is there a question that Alessandro would like to ask Mario and vice versa?
Alexander: What day is it today? Mario, where do you think we will be on November 6, 2025?
Mario: Maybe in a recording studio, but under another name.
You are giving me a preview of news…
Alexander: the problem is that he's giving it to me too…
Mario: Another name like people, like Carlo and Gennaro. We will change our personal data to escape from everything.
And what question would Mario like to ask Alessandro?
Mario: Alessandro, in a year will you be in Italy or abroad?
Alexander: Although I wish to spend a long period abroad, I believe that on November 6, 2025 I will be in Italy. Also because, if I wasn't here, it would mean that something messed up happened.
