It’s been more than six years since we’ve seen Spanish alt-rockers Hinds in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection… But this Friday, October 25th, you’ll have two chances to see the Madrid-based duo in the 215, when they’ll be playing a midday set at World Café Live for this week’s WXPN Free At Noon concert, followed by a full-length show that night at First Unitarian Church, the site of their last local appearance in May 2018. Ana Perrote and Carlotta Cosials are currently touring behind VIVA HINDS, Hinds’ fourth studio LP and first as a duo (bassist Ade Martin and drummer Amber Grimbergen left the fold in 2022), which dropped last month on Lucky Number. The album was produced by former Vaccines drummer Pete Robertson (who’s spent recent years working with the likes of Crawlers, Porno for Pyros, Clairo, Birdy, Orla Gartland, Chloe Moriondo, and beabadoobee…) and engineered by GRAMMY nominee Tom Roach, and features collaborations with Beck (“Boom Boom Back”) and Fontaines D.C.’s Grain Chatten (“Stranger”). I recently got a chance to chat with Hinds’ Ana Perrote via Zoom, shortly after the first night of the band’s North American tour…
Izzy Cihak: You recently released your fourth LP, VIVA HINDS, which has gotten a ton of praise from critics, and you’ve also already toured it a bit. Have you had any favorite reactions to the music, whether from critics, fans, or live audiences?
Ana Perrote: The critics are the audience, I’m not gonna lie. We’re very happy that we’re getting nice reviews and stuff, but the real moment to see if we’re connecting with people and we’re making a change and making something beautiful is when we play live. And we haven’t really, really toured that much. We’ve only played Mexico and London as headlining shows, but it’s been absolutely insane! Like, we’ve had to change the setlist and adapt it because of how well the new ones are doing, which is the greatest feeling ever!
Izzy: I know that this is the first album that had the two of you working as a duo, so I’m curious how you think the album compares to previous releases, both in terms of sound and just the process of writing and recording it?
Ana: Writing has been pretty similar, because we always wrote kind of the same way, me and Carlotta with the guitars, sometimes a keyboard, and that’s pretty much it. But, we really saw a difference in the recording. A handful of the songs were more “open” [does air quotes] when we went to the studio. For some of them, we knew exactly how the rhythm was going to be, but some of them were more open and we didn’t know. For example, with “Coffee,” we didn’t know how the drums should go. So, in one way, we felt that we had to work a lot more (There was no time to look at the phone or anything!)
But, at the same time, we were reducing the team in general, not only not having a drummer and bass player, but also only having two other people in the studio: the producer and the engineer. We were so focused and working so hard that there wasn’t any time for insecurities. Sometimes when there’s a lot of opinions in a room, it can dilute the core and the rawness of the song. I think one of the most important things is that rawness and being so honest.
So, eliminating all of the people around it, and really leaving it to the bones of the structure — which is two writers, a producer, and an engineer — made it very freeing for the actual songs. In the past, I’ve been like, “Oh, I want this solo. I wrote this solo, and it has to be in the song!” And it’s like, “No, it goes against the vocal,” or it goes against the song, so it’s not gonna go there. It was, in that sense, a lot more freeing and a lot better for the actual songs and the final result, I think.
Izzy: The album was produced by Pete Robertson, who has worked on so many really cool records in recent years. How was it working with him? What do you feel like he brought to the sound or even just the sessions?
Ana: The album would be so different if he wasn’t involved. He was very, very, very important. He’s a very different producer compared to everything we’ve seen before. In the past, the other producers kind of like had a vision for us. They saw us and they were like, “This is what I like the most about this band and I’m going to explode that to the maximum.” But what Pete saw was ourselves, and our relationship, not so much our “punk” side, or our “soft” side, or our vocals. It was deeper, it was us as people, and our relationship, and how that translated to the songs. So, having him with his sensitivity in the studio, and having someone guide you so much, but yet leaving you so much space to be yourself, was like seeing a magician. It felt so effortless, but yet so important and decisive for the final result. Honestly, he’s a fucking genius.
Izzy: Not to detract from the music, but you recently released bonus track “Bats,” which I know was inspired by Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round. I have to admit that I haven’t seen that, but I do love Vinterberg’s The Celebration, Dear Wendy, and The Hunt, and am hugely into cinema, in general, so I’m curious to hear about some of your favorite films, whether recent releases or all-time favorites that you might want to recommend to our readers?
Ana: First of all, you have to watch that movie! Another movie that’s important for this process was an animated movie called The Red Turtle, which inspired the last song on the album, “Bon Voyage.”
[Carlotta briefly enters frame and she and Ana discuss cinematic influences in Spanish, with Ana explaining, “She’s been my nurse for the morning, so it was her time to shower.”]
Carlotta Cosials: La Vie de bohème! By Aki Kaurismäki, the director — the very, very silent director — that all the characters are always in silence, that guy!
Ana: That movie really inspired us, to make us realize we’re artists, no matter what…
Carlotta: And we’re always going to be poor, so stop fighting against it [laughs].
Ana: And sometimes you have things, and you share it, and sometimes you have nothing, and it’s okay, and it doesn’t really matter what you have and what you don’t have, you still write…
Izzy: You just kicked off a ton of live dates, starting with this North American tour, and then next year you have dates throughout Europe, the UK, and Asia. Are there any dates you’re especially excited to play?
Ana: I know it’s gonna sound fake, I know this, but there isn’t a single place that I’m not super fucking excited to be. These last couple of years we have been opening for people, or playing festivals, or doing small runs, blah-blah-blah… And now knowing that we’re gonna be in venues packed with our fans, with soundchecks, playing our new album, everything is so exciting… every part of it! I don’t care the size, I don’t care the place, we’re very in love with live music and we’re very excited to be able to do it wherever we’re at, whether we’re in a fucking small pub in a corner of England or Tokyo!
Izzy: What can be expected of the live show when you return to First Unitarian Church?
Ana: You can expect to fall in love again with humanity… and Hinds [laughs]. What inspires me when I see performers is when I see them really connecting and enjoying what they’re doing. And I really truly think that, of all of the bands that I’ve seen play, we’re the band that enjoys being onstage the most [laughs]. We really, really, really enjoy it and we try to make everyone part of it, and we work really hard to give the best show that we can… and to enjoy it!
Izzy: It’s been a while, like you said, since you’ve done headlining dates in a lot of places, including America. But you’ve done a ton of touring over the years. So, I’m curious, do you have anything special that you do to kind of keep yourselves sane on the road, or to keep yourselves in the right headspace to be playing these shows constantly?
Ana: I think right now it’s kind of the opposite… Being on tour is what keeps me sane [laughs]! We have been working so much in Madrid, so much admin work, interviews, directing music videos, writing… a lot of time thinking, rather than doing… Right now, it feels like this is the break, like actually doing stuff… I don’t know if I said this, but I broke my foot in Mexico… and yesterday I was being wheelchaired in the airport by a very nice man called Luis, and he was saying, “How does it feel to be onstage?” And I honestly wasn’t even lying when I told him, “It’s the best feeling in the world.” So, anything around it is just a thing that you have to do to get to the best feeling in the world for an hour every night. That’s what keeps me sane [laughs].
Izzy: Finally, and this is a really massive question, but I’m just realizing that it’s the 10th anniversary of your earliest singles, so I’m curious about just a few of the personal highlights of your first decade of Hinds, whether they be milestones or just things that were really cool to you?
Ana: First of all, I love that you said, “Your first decade,” assuming that we have many more decades to come! I love that! There’s so many things… We’re so lucky because we’re so proud of what we do. I know it’s a huge privilege to work on something that is simultaneously your job and your passion, but I think I love knowing that we have opened the doors a little bit for women in music. I realize more and more how important that representation is, just seeing girls and women onstage doing what they do, especially doing it in the way that we’re doing it, which is “punk” and yelling, and we make mistakes, and we cry, and we break our feet [laughs], and we don’t hide the ugliness of life, we go through it… So, I think if I had to take one thing out of all of that, it would be that, just being part of the change for the best.
*Get your tickets for First Unitarian Church here.
**Register for WXPN’s Free at Noon here.
***Listen for Hinds on the next edition of Philthy Radio, 11/15 (9-11pm ET) on Y-Not Radio.