Good Bad Times: Lockdown Life With Hinds
Party hard Spanish garage punk outfit talk their new album...
Spanish garage rock four-piece *Hinds* released their new album ‘The Prettiest Curse’ a little under a week ago, a rebellious statement against sexism in the music industry, and their patriarchal naysayers.
Indeed, it feels like a new era for the group. They’ve made an album that really feels like their own, both in terms of the time they spent making it and also in the way it fixes their identity as a band. While moving away from the lo-fi sound they are known for, they have embraced a more ‘pop’ approach.
Need an example? Well, latest single ‘Just Like Kids (miau)’ is a playful response to the criticism they often face.
Clash arranged a Zoom call with one of Hinds’ frontwomen, Ana García Perrote to learn more about the new album.
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*How’s lockdown going?*
*Ana:* [Hesitates]. I’ve had two different phases. The hardest part for everyone was proper lockdown and just being home and stuff, was somehow easier for me. I really enjoyed it and I did a lot of stuff. But now it’s hitting me that it’s ‘the new reality’. To me, it’s just like...I don’t like this new reality so (I’m) not bad now but could be better.
*Congratulations on releasing ‘The Prettiest Curse’. How does it feel to have it out there?*
Like I was saying, it’s weird. Obviously, I don’t think postponing it one more time or something like that would have been the choice at all, or would have been better, but a bit weird. I don’t know.
Usually we are on tour so much that we get fed a lot by the audience and, I don’t know, just people, that energy that you have when you play live. Something that we don’t have now at all so the only way of knowing ‘is it going well or not?’ is by emails or by comments or likes and stuff like that which really, really sucks compared to a live show. I think we’re getting a lot of good feedback. Our fans are loving it which is the only thing that keeps me going.
*Is there a theme to the album?*
The whole concept behind the title ‘The Prettiest Curse’...We realised halfway through writing it, we were talking about a lot of dark things about our reality e.g. having an identity crisis or we were talking about sexism as women in the music industry. Just in general, missing home and feeling lost and more harsh feelings that we hadn’t really touched before.
So we realised we were telling our reality for the first time as musicians and as a band that has been touring non-stop for six years now. We decided that we needed a way of telling that that wasn’t so horrible and we realised (that we could do it) how you tell kid’s stories.
Centuries ago, the popular knowledge was told (with) very, very dark stories but, at the same time, they were told under these fairytales, even though they were very harsh. We liked that idea. We also (felt) empowered by the music and the layers. Somehow it just made sense when we wrote the lyrics of ‘The Prettiest Curse’. It had that double feeling and that paradox of having to sacrifice everything you like for the thing you like the most, which is this whole life.
*Was ‘The Prettiest Curse’ a change in direction for you?*
Yeah, it was a very, very big step. I’m very proud of what we did.
*What was it like making the album?*
Making the album was fun. It was the first ever time we enjoyed being in the studio. Up until now, it was always very rushed, between tours and stuff. For the first time here, we stopped touring and we totally focussed on the writing. It was great not to have that pressure.
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*What is your current single, ‘Just Like Kids (miau)’ about?*
It’s like a mix of a lot of conversations we’ve had from fans, people in the industry, random strangers. Basically, all that advice and mansplaining we’ve had since we started.
*What’s the most annoying thing that someone has said to you?*
It’s so absurd that it’s not really annoying anymore but one of my favourites is when people tell us...We get the simultaneous response from people saying that, ‘We’re here because we’re too pretty’ but, at the same time, we get, ‘These girls are so ugly’ because obviously we’re not matching the standard they want. It’s funny to be constantly told, ‘You’re not pretty enough’ or ‘The only reason you’re there is because you’re too pretty’.
*What was it like making the music video for ‘Just Like Kids (miau)’?*
It was fun, it was fun. My boyfriend directed it. He also did ‘Riding Solo’. It’s cool, because I feel like this album, for the first time, we’re having people that are very close to us and that know us as directors that are very personal in this whole project. It’s very collaborative and it’s not directors trying to make us be or do things we are not or don’t want to do.
Their vision of us is (coming from) people that actually know us and know who we are and what we do. It was just a lot of fun, especially (since) we hadn’t done a studio music video in so, so long... since ‘Trippy Gum’ - the B-side of the first single that we ever released. So it was literally fun.
*You sing in Spanish on this album. How did you come to that decision?*
It was something that we had been wanting to do for a while. We kind of tried with the second album, on the last song we sang in French, Spanish and English but we hadn’t had the time to come out of our comfort zone before. When we were going to block a whole year to dedicate to the album, we thought, ‘f*ck it, let’s do it’. We started studying the language.
Basically, listening to it and talking about it, going back and forth. We didn’t know if it was going to be a full song in English and a full song in Spanish, we didn’t really know how to match them together. It came pretty naturally to us to mix them, which is very Hinds because it’s like how we talk when we’re having a meeting with our label. Suddenly, we say some sentences in Spanish if there’s no translation.
Our career has always been very international. Actually, the UK is where we really started so it feels nice to match those two languages in one song, and I think it’s very Hinds to just do that. Not have to choose one or the other.
*Do you miss touring?*
Yes, it’s weird because there’s always this bad feeling of when you’re touring you miss home and when you’re home you miss touring. I miss playing shows. I don’t miss touring because the only good thing about touring, for me, is the shows. I really, really, really miss playing live.
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'The Prettiest Curse' is out now.
Words: *Narzra Ahmed *
Photo Credit: *Keane Shaw*
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