Madrid-based singer Coque Malla releases the album “Even though we are dead”, in which she responds to the transience of our existence with liveliness and noisy restlessness.
in this disk It touches on an unrelated topic. Have you been affected by the deaths of music idols that have trickled in in recent years?
Actually, I never thought about this, but it’s true: Bowie, Prince, Cohen, Jerry Lee Lewis… They made people experience the feeling of immortality. I understand now. But in addition to this, a number of things came together: time itself, when the calculations began to become disturbing… Summer came and “again?” you say. The pandemic hit us with an existential collapse, put death in front of us, and conveyed fragility to us. Later, the death of my parents was added to my fatherhood. And death as a metaphor for things ending: your children’s childhood, couples, friendships breaking up…
in culture source It was common to treat the subject of death as tragic and gothic, but over time this subject seeps into the works of many artists in a different way as they realize that it is serious.
I believe that death is present in every work that arouses minimal interest, be it painting, literature, songs. Art is made with death, sex, desire, spiritual hunger… What gave me confidence here was knowing and feeling that the album contains a lot of vitality. I could have had a throwback album, but it didn’t happen.
The album has a combination of a slightly sinister naiveté and attention to melody. It is also a production full of adventure.
I love the foundation of a ‘garage’ band playing live, mixed with sound effects that give depth of field. Radiohead members’ parallel project The Smile blew my mind, and there are clear influences from both bands on this album. But it’s a conceptual effect that comes from these guys’ knack for destroying songs and always surprising you. As a humble Spanish student, I tried to put this into practice.
Short album: ten songs. Do you compose a lot and then choose?
For a while now, the system has been recording skits over the phone and humming them. Maybe I’ll spend two years making stupid recordings and eventually collect a hundred or so audio files and keep ten of them. And here I go to those ten songs. I wanted the pulse to be maintained and intense on this album. If I had lengthened it, it would have decreased a little more.
Romanticism seeps into the title track: “I can’t resurrect / but I can invent a life for you.”
It makes me very happy to see that I experience love more intensely as I get older. When you feel like love is for life and life will end at some point…it’s very ‘heavy’. Dying together is a very cruel, very difficult idea.
He has been recording solo albums for almost 25 years, and the latest cycle, starting with ‘The Last Man on Earth’ (2016), shows him in a kind of second youth.
Thank you, but yes, I feel like there is a power, a source inside me and I don’t know where it comes from. Where do muses come from? A possible origin for me is the discovery that art, that creation, is infinite. The possibilities of combinations of melodies, harmonies, ideas… If you decide not to soldier on, to specialize in a style, but to travel, it is endless and very inspiring.
The Ronaldos started in 1985 in the final stages of the movement. What do you think of the Guadianesque debate about the good and bad of it all?
I only experienced the move through my brother. He was a child, he wouldn’t go out. I didn’t know about Rock-Ola or Penta. So, is there anyone who opposes this move? I can’t understand this.
Because it is meaningless and not politicized.
Blessed depoliticized generation, because this is now a pain. Everything is political now and they put you here and there and it’s exhausting. After the suffocation caused by the dictatorship, incredible things came out of the movement, and this was a very natural thing. I don’t see how you can object to that. There is a very tiring and very stupid discussion on the networks.
So now, when you release an album, which television channels does it go to?
Well, very little. Today we went to ‘Culturas 2’ in La 2. A live show with voice and piano. But there is no program to go and play. It seems to me that people come to me and say: “But you don’t make music anymore, do you?” They don’t understand what you’re doing. There are people who believe I or Bunbury are dead.
We had the opportunity to see her singing with Miguel Ríos at the Palau Sant Jordi a few weeks ago.
I also said that I was shabby etc. I was one of those who sang because I came from a different generation and I had to get rid of it, but once upon a time I used to listen to ‘Rock & Ríos’ like an animal. Singing ‘The Blues on the Bus’ with him in Barcelona was like singing ‘My Way’ with Sinatra.