There are artists who do not have a plan B, who gamble everything; there are those who have other possibilities that allow them to continue with their art, and there are those who, despite having a second option just in case, remain faithful to their vocation. Paula Valls is one of the third, and the reader can remember her signature on these pages during her internship, just a few months ago.
But if you listen to his music, you will understand what his mission must be, how his music can make our lives kinder and deeper. Amiable, although the subjects she talks about are not, as she herself explained during Saturday’s concert at Luz de Gas, as part of the Barnasants festival, to present her latest album, Commencer de nou (Satélite K) : a journey against the monster, in her case, an eating disorder that kept her away from the stage when everything seemed to be going her way. The next stop will be at the Strenes festival in Girona, on April 5.
Accompanied by a spectacular trio – Abril Saurí on drums, Miquel Sospedra on bass and Moog and Guillem Callejón playing guitars and synthesizers -, Valls reviewed a few tracks from the last album, starting with Que el temps passi, with a voice reinforced with dense textures, to continue threading the narrative of his fight against the disease, to which he gives a name and even speaks directly to Filomena: “To understand that it will be / like this from now on / is to succeed in winning”. The artist from Manlleu stands in front of the piano in PV_01, in which, after admitting that he has “taken refuge in the dust of books”, he remembers that “I cannot say the forbidden word”. But Valls does not allow the harshness of the situation to take over his music and he smiles and his voice touched by soul illuminates everything in songs such as Qué he callat, Commencer de nou or Sincera. He switches to English to sing his single Time , which vindicates the fight against the clocks, and takes us on a journey to his first album, I am (Satélite K, 2018) with Monsters , when he didn’t know what he was up against, and he assures the public that he owes them an Apology – published after the album, almost as a coda -. He continues with Ya no queda nada para curar, Es estrada and No need to say anything to stand with the band and acoustic instruments at the front of the stage recovering Circles. There is so much to say that we could go on talking in circles, but perhaps we should listen to her.
