Gene Dante takes long view on new album ‘DL/UX’
Heads will roll, sparks will fly. Before we tear it down, let the curtain rise … It’s showtime.
These words end a poetic prologue welcoming listeners into the glam and grit of Gene Dante’s new album “DL/UX.” The vocal and shimmering guitar underneath it has an aesthetic somewhere between introductions to Alice Cooper’s “Welcome to My Nightmare,” Jane’s Addiction “Ritual De Lo Habitual” and the Killers’ “Sam’s Town.” They let one ease into something grand, complete and loud: “Showtime” leads to the big rock boom of “She’s Outside.”
“I knew I wanted a prologue, a climb, a climax, a conclusion and an epilogue,” Dante told the Herald. “I look at the albums I love and they were conceived that way. They had a flow like that.”
The Boston-based Dante thought he might be done with albums. It has been a good decade since Dante and his band, Future Starlets, had released their last LP. They had released a string of strong singles, but no fulllength.
“I honestly thought the album was dead because with streaming you can pick and choose your adventure as opposed to plopping down a 12-inch hunk of vinyl and going from start to finish,” Dante said ahead of a “DL/ UX” release show Saturday at the Magic Room in Norwood.
But looking at the tracks he had — opener “Showtime,” closer “No Road Home” and 13 more diverse songs — he couldn’t refuse the chance to build a long-player with an epic rise and fall. “DL/UX” leans into what makes Dante and his Starlets so wonderful: glam rock loaded with hooks and powered by Dante’s huge, warm voice. But it wades into heady waters too.
The lyrics to “High Time” show manipulative people the door; the music swims in pure power pop. “Little Belle” celebrates a guardian angel through a ballad rooted in both David Bowie and Lou Reed’s Berlin. “Pigs in the Powder Room” is punk and disco, very happy to wallow in that strange space between sneer and boogie.
“It’s easy to write about something happy in a happy song but where is the surprise in that,” Dante said. “It’s the same with sadness. But you can’t do 15 songs of the same thing. You have to surprise people one way or the other.”
An album of 15 songs can seem like an indulgence. Now, being indulgent is part of Dante’s charm — after all, his touchstones are Bowie, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Preseley, Alice Cooper. But here indulgence doesn’t come at the expense of being economical and introspective. Dante, the band and producer John Eye put “DL/UX” together over a long time. The choices were labored over.
“When I went to John and the band, I said we are going to be able to listen to this record from start to finish and be proud of every song on it,” Dante said. “We called it the ‘no wince’ policy. If we came across a part and said, ‘Ah, we really need to tighten that up,’ then we had to go back and do it again.”
Dante has spent so much time acting — maybe you saw him as a hockey coach in Bauer’s cliche-crushing “Be Proud to Play Like Girl” ad or next to Chris Evans in Apple TV show “Defending Jacob” — it is great to see him return to rock with such bravado, craft and contemplation. And it’s great to hear him craft an intro welcoming us back to his distinctive aesthetic.