Basements: music to fight hypocrisy

Wild Animals

Ref: BC.293
Release date : 20 mayo, 2016
Format: LP

When Built to Spill speak of those ‘broken chairs’ that your body gets used to, from which we adopt a critical posture where everything bad in the world is everyone else’s fault, the music sector always points towards the venues, bookers, labels, formats, media platforms, bands or even the publics free will; Wild Animals cut the crap and answer with action. It’s almost as if they say: “You’re the problem”. Its impossible to not fall for both their ethics and their ‘image’ –understood due to the array of music references involved-. Both born from ’90 indie culture, hardcore combustion and a dominant and vital need to perform, spread the word, expand the sound and keep this action network, so consciously woven underground, where the city sewages sanitise culture, alive.

Just a year after First Songs EP, Wild Animals wield their debut under the title Basements: Music to fight hypocrisy. The album nods towards Warehouse: Songs and stories (1986) by Hüsker Dü and is based on “what basements mean to us, basements, squats, houses or self-managed venues with DIY spirit, where people talk with honesty and do everything with passion.” It’s when going to any of these associations when the idea that once seemed utopic on paper, suddenly becomes an accurate picture of reality. To declare their love for basements is to dedicate their work to musical freedom, to alienate their values from the markets hypocrisy. Those that know Fon, Paula and Jamie, know that this statement is not only found in their lyrics, but also in their attitude. They manage the labels We Are The Daughters and La Agonía de Vivir and have been members of bands like Enoch Ardon, Allfits, Notes to myself and Jamie 4 President, to just mention a few. They are so committed that you can’t help ask yourself “What would have happened if you hadn’t started playing an instrument or listening to music? Jamie used to play football but gave it up. We used to have a good laugh imagining him as multimillionaire Madrid player.”

Whatever the story, we would have also missed out on this new punk rock and power pop journey, chiselled by Santi and Víctor García at Estudios Ultramarinos (giving the bands already perfect songs, a sound full of detail). This is an album where you’ll find the origins of a passion (“Heavy Metal Saved My Life”), a change of scenery “Wave Goodbye Coastline”, a moving radiography of a love story (“Logic Makes No Sense”), socio political views in “Guilty” and “The Empire Strikes Back” or the TV series crossword “Television Blows”. There’s also an emotional anecdote of three people torn wide open. Maybe when they were singing, “tomorrow’s friends, tonight we’re only strangers” in “Avocado” –referring to their European tours-, they already knew that the listeners’ answer to this album would be: a total crush on their music and life.

Booking


La Agonía de Vivir
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