Always looking to the present and the future, Els Amics de les Arts face the final stretch of a tour that they will remember more than any other due to a pandemic that forced them to leave the march of Eduard Costa and the beginning in the background. of a new stage. Conceived in the precovid era, The signal you expected, their sixth full-length, has ended up becoming one of the most emotional and celebrated albums in the more than seventeen years of the band now formed by Dani Alegret and Girona’s Ferran Piqué and Joan Enric Barceló.
How do you feel about this pandemic tour?
The feelings in the end are that music has great power and that people are fantastic. Despite having to suspend or reschedule concerts throughout the tour, people kept coming, still wanting to get closer to the concerts. And this is surely the best news. Still, people know and see that they need live music. For us doing this tour was a test of fire that shows us that we will still be alive for many more years.
Did you feel comfortable being three on stage?
We thought, before starting with this new album, that the big challenge of this new stage would be this, to go from four to three members. Going from quartet to trio without losing our essence. However, what came next, with the onset of the pandemic and confinement, was so strong, that this detail was left in the background. With “The Sweetest Days”, a series of concerts in a more acoustic format and with a more retrospective view, since we had to postpone the release of the album, we embraced many of the old themes, not only in acoustic, but also as the trio.
The signal you were waiting for is the second album they record with Tony Doogan, producer of international bands like Teenage Fanclub, Belle & Sebastian or Mogwai. What have they found in him?
The soundtrack from the album Un Estrany poder is very clear and obvious. It’s a proposal that wants to try to keep our ideas and songs from falling apart. That is, with Tony, happy songs are very happy, sad songs are very sad, and emotional songs are very emotional.
Despite being conceived earlier, many people have seen some parallels between the pandemic and this sixth work.
Everything we wrote before the pandemic then had a different meaning. The album fell into that big hinge. It was made before Covid arrived, but when people could hear it, the world had changed a lot. The best part about singing is that when life passes you by and you run into it, you can always read it differently from how it was originally conceived. The lyrics of the song that gives the album its title speak of a “I” who is afraid but is aware that if you feel afraid it means that good things will happen. In a prepandemic reading, the letter also wants to be like a love letter between the three of us.
How have they evolved from the time they wrote Jean Luc to the time they conceived The Abysses?
Seventeen years really pays off. We started making songs in a very playful way and with no other pretensions than laughter. But there came a time, especially after the Castafiore Cabaret, which came out after several demos, in which we understood that a joke does not last forever. Thus, without losing the sense of humor, in the Bed & Breakfast we already introduced stories, situations and characters. Every pop musician talks about the same topics, the grace is in how you approach loneliness, love, loss or nostalgia. We believe that we have managed to find a way in which people can easily identify with us. And if two songs as opposed as My Body and The Abyss coexist on the same record, it’s because there’s a way to tell the story and so they’re connected in some way.
Is it difficult to combine life on stage with being a parent?
People may think that we never stop at home, but I am very lucky to bring my children to school every morning and I think there are many parents who work eight hours a day in an office or a factory. that they can’t do something as simple as this. We are self-employed in music and sometimes disappear for three days or a week to do concerts, yet we alternate this with other long periods in which we can live the day to day.
Normal Parents is the title of his first musical, which will be released next fall. How was this project conceived?
It is a very solid project that has endured four years of gestation, with a pandemic in the middle, which has a great casting that we will announce soon, which has a director, who has had Marc Artigau, who has written history with us, and which has the Absolute Minority as its producer. We’re behind the songs and the script, and we’re really looking forward to releasing it. Making a musical was an old dream that we already thought we would never fulfill. It’s been like making a record. From September we will be rehearsing and rewriting everything that is needed so next fall will be a very fun time in terms of family reconciliation (river).
Did they plan to include any of their greatest hits in the musical’s repertoire?
When the idea of making a musical arose, there was talk of including some of the hits. But the idea did not seduce us. If the story were to go from Jean Luc to No More, Louisiana, it would have been like a concert, and we already do concerts. Finally, we decided to make songs for the show. However, the show is full of references to our most popular songs, with many hypertext references and many of the characters that our fans already know.
Do you already have a new record on the horizon?
We are working on a basis of about thirty or forty ideas. Now we have to look at what songs seduce us and see what ideas we have for the lyrics. There’s always an idea that gets hung up and ends up bridging between one record and the next. The idea is to release a record in 2023.