April Outlook: Spain

Faro
17.05.2022
9 min. Reading

By Sound World and Construction Area

Every moment has its songs and also its words. Incidence or pandemic are a recent example. In this spring, still somewhat autumnal, we are marked by others such as Donbas, Mariupol or Kherson. They are heard daily. The same as inflation, gas or energy. And a more recent one: Pegasus, the software designed by the Israeli intelligence service that was used to spy on Catalan pro-independence leaders and also on the President of the Government and his Defense Minister. As we said, thank goodness that in addition to words there are songs (and albums and movies and books...). Here is a selection for the month of April, to enjoy to the rhythm of a global geopolitical dance that never lets up.

April 30 marked one year since the launch of BITCH, the most important album in Zahara's career. The artist commemorates this anniversary by publishing the host of god, a song whose lyrics could already be found hidden in the box set by BITCH, but which had remained unpublished until today. Composed while Zahara finished recording the vocals for the album, she decided not to include it on this one and reserve it for a special moment. It has been produced by Marti Perarnau IV and Zahara herself and mixed by Jake Aron. On the other hand, the artist shone in style at the XIV edition of the MIN Awards for Independent Music, crowned a great winner with six awards: The Orchard Award for Album of the Year for PUTA, AGEDI Award for Best Pop Album, Sympathy For The Lawyer for Best Video Clip, SAE Spain Award for Best Musical Production, Best Original Lyrics and Marilians Award for Best Design.

Confeti de Odio will return this year with a second album with which to continue delving into his confessional and close pop. the bad ending is the first advance of this new studio album, a single that consolidates Lucas Vidaur's ability to walk the fine line that separates the most casual pop from rock guitars, and that also certifies the ingenuity of his lyrics, after lending his pen to artists like Amaia (I want but not, welcome to the show or Yamaguchi).

His first album, Spanish tragedy, which landed in the midst of a pandemic, emphasized the personal drama: the self-criticism of the tormented young man who seeks his place in the world. After three years fine-tuning an already recognizable formula —with its dose of cynicism and tenderness—, Lucas Vidaur seems to be ready to release his new album this summer.

Blade is the new single by the Barcelonan Queralt Lahoz, in which the artist explores the endlessness of electronic music, taking her proposal towards its most avant-garde side. With a base that mixes the grime with the carioca funk, Blade it is the acceptance of the angel and the devil that we all carry inside. A dichotomy between darkness and light, represented by the mestizo antihero in a trench coat from the 2000s, who reveals the darkest sound of Queralt Lahoz. The artist will publish other singles this 2022 under the joint support of the Costa Futuro and Say It Loud labels. Taking advantage of the release of the song and its corresponding video clip, Queralt has published three videos on its networks with interviews with various renowned women artists –La Pili, Adelaxd, Valeria Castro and La Yaniss– where they talk about anxiety, impostor syndrome and the darkest parts of its creation process. This is the first time that these artists show their most vulnerable part and make a taboo subject visible on networks. With Blade, Queralt Lahoz has taken advantage of the loudspeaker of music to talk about issues that affect us all, such as mental health.

guitarricadelafuente has released the video for his single Who turned on the light, preview of his long-awaited album The quarry. The video has been directed by Pedro Artola, produced by Sara Rentería and with photography by Carles F. Galí. Guitarricadelafuente ⸺whose real name is Álvaro Lafuente Calvo⸺ takes an important step forward with The quarry, one of the most anticipated albums of the season and which, for now, will be presented throughout Spain on a long tour of venues and festivals such as Mad Cool, Mallorca Live, Weekend Beach Festival or Santander Music Festival, among others.

Dance shop, the joint commitment of Miss Caffeina and Varry Brava to create a musical space without prejudice or labels, returns with new ideas and energy. After destroying their previous tour, they merge again on stage in a musical show that will tour all of Spain for the time being. The artists will once again present a unique staging with a special repertoire in which the hits of both will be interspersed with alternate collaborations. Dance shop coincides with the great moment of success that both Miss Caffeina are enjoying, with a new album released, the year of the tiger (Warner, 22) like Varry Brava, from Alicante, who after releasing their fifth album tacky (Hook, 20), embarked on the Benidorm Fest Eurovision adventure with their latest hit Raffaella. All these novelties, as well as the greatest hits of his career, are some of the songs that the new setlist by Dance shop. In addition, those attending the concerts will be able to listen again to his single shared Dance shop (here nobody knows your name) with which they managed to raise the public in 2020, as well as new joint music that both bands are preparing. Dance shop will be on the bill of Spanish festivals such as Weekend Beach Festival (July 6 to 9, Torre del Mar, Málaga), Cruïlla Festival (July 8, Barcelona), Sonorama Ribera (August 10 to 14, Aranda de Duero, Burgos) or Mediterránea Festival (August 19 to 20, Tavernes de la Valldigna, Valencia).

Dorian broke any established stylistic norm long ago to become one of the most interesting transoceanic experiments on the current music scene. Now the band is back with Ritual, a work of synaptic bursts, of love and dance, of romanticism that is not cloying. An album that proposes a labyrinth in which we enjoy getting lost, since each corner, each nook, hides a spark that drags us towards a temporary carousel: yesterday, today and tomorrow intermingle so that the flavors that remain under our tongue are reborn, spicy and unruly. Music for a world that communicates through invisible cables, with feelings faster than light.

Confirmed as one of the most consolidated proposals within the Spanish bedroom pop lineage, Bilbao's Yarea makes her debut with Lombardy 22, an album that collects everything learned over the last two years. The 25 minutes that this album lasts are more than enough to capture all the angles on which Yarea builds her musical personality. Beneath her face with kaleidoscopic features, the talented young woman makes her open-mindedness clear in the first three songs of Lombardy 22. Traces of acoustic pop, minimal neo-postpunk parameters and hints of urban music intensify in this initial trio of cuts, in which the common line is the pronounced intimacy expressed by his marked neutral vocal diction. Ah, he also dares with a tango! wonderful.

To speak of Sheila Patricia is to speak of a pioneer in the progressive conversion of Galician folklore into avant-garde music. Of obvious parallels with Rodrigo Cuevas, his new LP is a total commitment to self-discovery and the concern to conquer new horizons. Coming from the jazz scene, Sheila's progression since she started her musical career has been a continuous expansion of the battlefield. From jazz to folklore, its evolution now reaches Orixe, a work with which he vindicates his maternal artistic genes. And he has done it through a splendid mural of sonorities, where African rhythmic drive intersects with elegant Atlantic vocal panache and digital methodology with instrumental craftsmanship.

Love as a philosophy, beyond the carnal or the electric. The topic, thus, with capital letters, which Agustín Fernández Mallo faces in his new novel, The book of all loves. The intimacy of the room and poetry as a technology for sentimental recycling. The author finds the roots of love in the minimal inequalities left by unstable elements when they decompose, while the soundtrack of the new Pantheon is a hermetic version of Higgs Boson Blues by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. Poetry flows in each definition of love that Agustín Fernández Mallo slips into this novel, one of his best works, visceral and lyrical, but without losing an iota of the courage with which he injected the mutant gene into our literature two decades ago .

It came to Spanish cinemas Venicephrenia, thriller terrifying in which Álex de la Iglesia focuses his criticism on mass tourism and the gentrification of cities. And it does so with a horror film set in Venice. In nature there is an indissoluble link between beauty and death. The human being, indebted to his environment, imitates what he observes. Like mosquitoes attracted to the brightest lighthouse, tourists are turning off the lights of the most beautiful city on the planet. The agony of the last decades has unleashed anger among the Venetians. To stop the invasion, some have organized themselves, unleashing their survival instinct. The protagonists, a simple group of Spanish tourists, travel to Venice with the intention of having fun, oblivious to the problems that surround them. There they will be forced to fight to save their own lives.