• Vetusta Morla. "The queues to get food in Aluche are much more relevant than the people giving pots"
  • Resident "I had a very bad time, I came to think it was a hindrance and I was scared, I felt very vulnerable"

A Marc Ros has taken him the phase 1 with a disk quarantined and first novel just out to the street. He answers the phone first thing, about to go out to the studio to de-escalate the songs that will put the soundtrack to The Return of Abba (Sum of Lyrics), the story of a creative confinement à trois in Cadaqués that ends ... Nothing of spoilers .

He apologizes for the hours, for decades that his thing with sleep is a losing battle. These long two and a half months have been spent alone in his Barcelona flat , and not so bad. For an artist with a lonely soul, shutting himself up to work doesn't sound too Martian.

He has not made bread, nor has he accumulated toilet paper, nor has he shaved, nor has he done yoga ... and now he thinks that he may regret it. «Work, meditation and wine from Ribera. Very basic". If I had to summarize it in a verse by Sidonie, Marc Ros is clear: "You are here / you are here / I cannot see you but I know you are here". From the mask, it says so. For now, a new beginning and a lot of uncertainty ahead.

Twenty years writing songs and suddenly you go to the novel. Your lyrics always tell a story with their characters, your plots ... Were you missing characters? I have run out of space, yes. The characters in my songs didn't even have time to go to the bathroom, I was amazed that they could take a bath in a pretty cove in Cadaqués and have a gin and tonic. "New Normal" could very well be the title of a Sidonie album ... Has this situation inspired you anything? I haven't touched a comma to adapt any song. I suppose that everything that has happened will come out in other ways, but I don't see myself making a conceptual album about the coronavirus. We have finished the album during the confinement, in turns, and that is going to add epic to what is already epic to make an album that continues a novel. We will remember all our lives. Singing after taking off my mask is not the ideal scenario. I sing in a special way.

Abba's return has a lot of psychoanalysis, of self-knowledge through living with absolutely confronted personalities. Abba -which has nothing to do with the Swedes- and Hugo are condemned to agree to record an album together after an unexpected viral success almost by chance. Domènech is the fascinated eye that will capture the creative process in a documentary.

What has each of the three characters taught you about yourself? The book is a song of friendship and I have tried to learn how to relate to the people I love. They always complain that they don't see me, that I'm not there, I've always had that kind of social anxiety that has made me confine myself at home. Sometimes I think I'm happier being alone, but it's not like that. Both the novel and the video for the first single have Cadaqués as the setting, where you spent the summer with your family as a child. There is also a bit of Freudian that, more Dalí walking around there ... The novel did not start until I decided to set this stage. He is the fourth character, that town of pirates, witches, artists, with that mystical and so mythical, that it seems an island but it is not. My parents agreed with Dalí when he came to Portlligat and organized his soirées . He called them rose wine afternoons and the guests were beautiful people who passed by. There were two people in charge of going down to the town to look for beauty and youth. Two of the chosen ones were my parents. They reached the door and the teacher left, but they left out of fear. They must have imagined that this would be about drugs and orgies ... Absolute drama. The three characters in the novel are terrified of going mad, each in their own way. Which of your crazy things scares you the most? I have treated obsessive compulsive disorder. Live amazing things have happened to me live. There are chords that I can't do, for example. In your paranoia you say: if I do the re today something terrible will happen. There are images of concerts in which I am seen doing strange things with my feet. You are in public and you cannot hide it. That's when you have to stop and assume you have a problem. Fear is rampant when you are alone. When I was little I was bullied , maybe my creativity comes from there, I don't know. In the end, to continue working I have to be sane, more or less. I do meditation, it is my way of controlling these things.

But in addition to a good dose of internal analysis, The Return of Abba has a lot of generational portrait through the conversations. A portrait not too flattering.

"A video nonsense has brought us here", "do not trust the friends you make from the two million views" ... Do social networks trivialize the work of artists? They have earned things, they they have lost others. The mystery of the inaccessible artist that I want to continue seeing in my idols has been lost, but each one chooses the content they share. Seeing that you have made mussels or that you get out of the shower does not interest me as much as knowing what is happening today at the Hermitage. I am starting to use the networks in a way that does not create a vacuum for me. The characters also pose that class point that makes us draw conclusions from people because of how they dress, or how they behave. Does your public image conform to reality? At Sidonie we have taken care of both the image and the songs, because in the end they are still codes. It is as artistic as making an album, it is not frivolous. We are very fans of the aesthetics of the 60s, but I go to my house in pajamas and sometimes I receive pajamas at the hotel. It is my moment, my privacy. To protect myself I wear a cigarette, an ascot scarf and a navy coat blazer . In this sense, the two musicians in the novel also have two personalities: one off stage and the other on top. What part of you are you more afraid of discovering the people who know you for their music? My parents freaked out the first time they saw me on stage: what was that shy boy doing that didn't speak to anyone? You become the Other, and that Other practices mindfulness ; he does not think about the past or the future; nothing hurts. Those artists who try to make us believe that they are the same buying the bread that on stage ... Don't slip it in. Abba's return begins with a conversation about tourism: "It is full of ugly people." Is a more sustainable tourism possible? It is an issue that has obsessed me because I live in Poblenou and it is the neighborhood of Barcelona that has changed the most. All expensive tourist floors and hotels for those people who arrive by ocean liner. Cadaqués is also in danger of dying from success. The word Venice always comes to mind. I hope that good things will come out of this crisis.

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