12 years ago, a group of four friends achieved with their debut something unheard of: selling more than 50,000 copies of an album sung entirely in Catalan and returning to pop the naturalness with which Serrat and Lluís Llach were heard decades ago throughout Spain. Things have changed a lot since then: Arnau Vallvé, Martí Maymó, Roger Padilla and Guillem Gisbert are no longer 25 years old and the ukulele that sounded in Els millors professors europeus has long since accumulated dust. His latest work, Per la bona gent , published on his own record label, Ceràmiques Guzmán, is a surprising and heterogeneous mix of musical styles that is hard to classify.
A salad of pop, hip hop, rock and a lot of electronics in which each song is from his father and his mother. An ode to risk in which each theme "has its own freedom and personality," acknowledges Arnau Vallvé, and as often happens with the best works, relocates the first but improves with each listening . After his departure, on October 3, he has placed number one in the national sales and streaming lists.
Guillem Gisbert was inspired by (or rather, the Spotify random mode) one day while he was washing the dishes and Alenar, a song by Maria del Mar Bonet from 1977 , rang . "It was a crush," he acknowledges, and decided to sample it in the song that gives the album title. “We liked that part of the song in which he talks about a door that is open to good people and who has access to it. We all think we are good, but are we really? »Asks Padilla. Gisbert acknowledges that there was a "selfish" point in using it. «The sampler of Maria del Mar Bonet is not because we claim Maria del Mar Bonet, it is Manel appropriating her to make the song more beautiful».
He is not the only nod to other artists on the album, which includes samples of Els Pets, hidden verses of Jacint Verdaguer ( Formigues ), a Stars version of the unjustly forgotten Janis Ian ( Estrelles ) and even a collaboration with the same Sisa in El Vell music with an old intro from the great Gato Pérez, a disco ending with echoes of popular verbena.
“We are installed in a presentism in which one of the main attributes of cultural products is that they have just been published,” reflects Gisbert. «Irremediably great works are buried within memory and forgotten by the general public. To recover some of those recordings and put them in value is, I suppose, the sense of sampling ».
And then there are songs like Boy band , whose title looks like a joke but it's not so much. «It is a subject that obviously does not take itself too seriously. Sometimes the arrangements set the tone of the songs. But the text also does not pretend to be a joke, but to recognize that we are, in a way, a boy band. Or at least we work with a boy band logic, ”argues the soloist of the group. “There is a top-down look at the bands of the so-called indie scene when, deep down, they are not so different from commercial Yankee bands. They share an important part of the universe and group dynamics, with their good and bad things. We always tend to solve the separation between some groups and others in a way that makes us stay calm: on one side an evil product, with a casting in which the handsome blond is chosen, on the other hand the authorship. The pride of not being a product is fine, but neither is there for that much, ”he reflects. "In addition, we also did a casting and chose the most handsome drummer," Padilla jokes.
Basically, what happens to Manel is that they have been on the stage for more than a decade and, as Gisbert explains, "there is a part of work, routine, day by day" even in a job as creative as To make songs. "There are moments of absolute boredom , " he acknowledges. Per la bona gent is, they confess, an answer to that feeling of routine and comfort. "We have looked for new stylistic corners," they explain. They have also repeated with New York producer Jake Aaron , one of the engineers at A seat at the table in Solange. «If you think about it, there is some violence in the act of going on stage and singing songs. That is why you have to be sure of it, believe it, that everything has a meaning that goes beyond yourself. It's something we understood from the first record, I think. The years go by and you have more group self-awareness because the distance is greater ».
«From 25 to 37 life changes a lot» , recognize all the members of the group. Perhaps that is why in this album there are fewer love songs and some more disenchantment in the lyrics, which go on "memorized speeches," "exemplary citizens" and "official versions . " Gisbert does not worry too much about how the way of listening to music has been transformed, although he acknowledges that change exists. «I read recently about a study that analyzed the seconds since a song begins until the beginning of the chorus and how that distance has been reduced in the last 10 years because the listener has less patience. It's amazing how the way you consume music affects the composition. We do not consciously worry about that. In the end, the songs still have the value that you want to give them ». And he concludes: «That Spotify gives you such enormous access to all that music makes your vinyl collection have another value, I suppose. I have never been possessive or collector. I am interested in the song as a communicative act and that is there but it cannot be played ».
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