After a ten-record run, they already have their first three Latin Grammy nominations. How do you feel?
Santi Balmes: It feels good. Strange, I have to tell you, because everything is weird. Things in life sometimes come when you least expect them. With a certain Zen philosophy we are welcoming, let’s say, these awards, more than anything because we want to consider it a great experience and really from here everything that comes will be a gift. At the moment the three nominations are already a very big prize.
The album that brought them these nominations is VEHN, or Epic Journey to Nowhere. How would you describe that album?
SB: It is an album that I think sums up very well what Love of Lesbian is, with a rather curious melting pot of styles. We thought that the album was going to be more homogeneous but each song came out with a particular character. It is an album that in the end, within the heterogeneity, has a direction from claustrophobia to final hope. Each song is a world.
You say that it is not a homogeneous album, but at the same time it is very cohesive, and much more forceful than other albums they have made …
SB: It was the intention. We saw of Halley’s Comet, which is a longer album, in which the lyrics were very important. From there we reached an extreme where we did not feel like delving further. We swerved and tried to turn the wheel to the other side and look for a certain anger that we had, and that I think is reflected.
This album came out in April 2021. That, and some lyrics, make me think that they were working on this during the pandemic …
Uri Bonet: No, it is a pre-pandemic album. We really have been working on it since 2018, entering from time to time from that year until the 20th to the studio to make small demos and work on the songs. Although the lyrics and songs are themes that are very much in keeping with a pandemic era, it is done before. We really have a Nostradamus in the band here, which is Santi.
Since May they have been on tour. How has it been for you to enter scenarios in the strange conditions we are in and after a whole period of confinement?
SB: You have defined it very well, stranger. It is a curious sensation because you wanted to be in front of people, but at the same time what you had in front of you was certainly expressionless, with the mask, sitting down. Perhaps we chose the repertoire in such a way that perhaps we did not influence as much as we could in the most moved songs so as not to generate a security conflict and perhaps we took advantage of, I don’t know, “School of aerial dance”, which is a subject that was not going to enter In principle, so that you can listen to it sitting down. It’s an ideal song, right? I think if it had been a standard old-fashioned concert, a pre-covid concert, that song would have gone into another room format. From there we have been adapting like water, because the circumstances were what they were, I took it or you left it. We had been here for a long time. What you can never do is put out a Love of Lesbian album, which is understood to be coming with a tour, and it is not going to do the tour. That’s killing a record.
Sure, because you don’t let him live beyond the study …
SB: Of course, and we did not want that to happen, more than anything because we are a band that was born a bit for the direct.
UB: Yes, it is true that there were moments of much reflection between when to release it, how to release it, how to present this album, which in fact, we all imagined it would be an impasse album, and, my goodness, to make an impass album, don’t see the one that is rolling the disc. But, certainly, if in March or April 2020 they had told us that we would do forty-five concerts in the year 2021, it would surely be something that we would not believe. And we will end like this: we will end 2021 and with 45 concerts. It was a gift. In other words, it is clear that we have worked triple what we would surely have done on a normal tour, for what it would be VEHN in a normal time, but it has been a gift. You cannot imagine in the moment so beautiful, so pleasant and so emotionally powerful that we are living the stages of this tour. We are very happy.
How have you noticed the mood of the people in the concerts in this new stage?
SB: There is everything. There are people who are still afraid, others who do not follow the rules well and others who have known how to adapt to the circumstances. I think that from now on we will see the most special moment, from the concerts that follow, because the people of now do begin –at least here in Spain– to be a little calmer due to the vaccination issue and the issue of the low rate of infections. And yes, there is a need for the epidermis, to touch, to hug. There is a brutal need, we all have it. Yesterday my daughters threw a party and when I got home all the friends were hugging and very close, and that led me to think about all the time they had been without doing it, or with brutal precautions. Now it is understood that people who go to a concert were vaccinated, before you did not know what you were next to, and that makes you relax more.
Going back to the record, what do you think it does to VEHN So special to have already gotten three Latin Grammy nominations?
UB: I believe that what makes it special is everything that precedes it. We are a band that has been together for more than 20 years, more than 20 years on the road. Many albums, many songs and experiences. We are a band that have learned to forgive each other absolutely everything among the members themselves, and I think that we have made some last difficult decisions, but they were necessary. That was just before the recording of the album and it completely liberated us from things that we had been carrying for many years, and we have been very aware that we are right at the most mature moment of this band. I see it very clearly in the songs, in the sound, in how we are spinning. For me it is the best moment of this band. And it’s funny that it’s after twenty years, and it really is that for me. These nominations are a gift to the trajectory of the band and for those of us who have participated in this band for 20 years. We are mature, we believe in ourselves and we are completely sure of what we are doing.
And it does reflect a lot on the album. It’s a great album, but they’ve also made others before that deserved a Latin Grammy …
SB: Thank you. We have come to the same conclusion. I think these nominations are very much appreciated, but maybe before we didn’t have the support with other albums that I think also deserved it. But hey, that’s a very, very personal opinion, and things come when they come. In our case we have had a constant trajectory, but perhaps sometimes the agents outside the band that have surrounded us have not helped us as much as now.