They don’t consider themselves a supergroup, they find it megalomaniac, but if you look at them one by one we find ourselves before a category band, a group of groups with musicians from Love of Lesbian, Sidonie and Egon Soda. Led by Gonçal Planas, a benchmark on the Catalan Indie scene, Mi Capitán returns to the music scene after six years of silence with Como ladrones sorprendidos, the third album by the rocker combo where, together with Gonçal (vocals and guitar), we find Ferran Pontón (bass ), Ricky Lavado (percussion), Dani Ferrer (keyboards), Víctor Valiente (guitar), Ricky Falkner (drums) and Julián Saldarriaga (guitar). Before the presentation concert, tonight at La Textil (10 pm) we spoke with Gonçal and Julián to find out how they are preparing their premiere.
you are a band of bands
Julián: We are friends who have met on the band scene, and Gonçal had always been behind the scenes. With Love of Lesbian he had been a sound engineer in the beginning, then a tour manager. He had always had songs, in fact he played with the Sanpedros, and we all knew that he was the most leader of all the musicians we had worked with, because he had the show-off, the ability to get on stage and invent characters. .
As part of this joke we began to meet in a rehearsal room to see each other on Tuesdays, which we baptized as Sudden Tuesdays. We would go in the afternoon, without any aspirations, and we would buy wine and whiskey, we saw it as a party that included the game of changing our instruments. The bassist played drums, the guitarist played bass or percussion, this was the idea a bit.
This fresh spirit carried over into a series of songs, until we did Suave la voz, which caught Warner’s attention and we got a two-disc deal. It’s something that had never happened to us with Love of Lesbian, Standstill or Egon Soda, which is that a multinational record company comes with a song and makes you a contract. This is precisely what happened with the group that had the least aspirations.
That without ever having touched?
Gonçal: We had not given any concert, in fact everything happened after the first performance when we received the proposal. We played six songs that were the ones we had up to that moment. We posted the video and they called us one day, I remember we were with Love of lesbian on Tour of Scotland, to tell us that we had 40,000 views. I get goosebumps because I thought: could this happen to me at 35?
Are you all from Barcelona?
Julián: We have all grown in some way here in Barcelona. Training, military service or university has always been in Barcelona. When you were going to give the concerts, where you were going to see them, when we began to see each other at the La clapperboard festival, the concerts that we organized or that we were involved with. The bands that didn’t appear on the bills had the chance to play at the Magic, the Apolo or the Scale.
Gonçal: The somersault of leaving everything to dedicate yourself to music is something you did with people you identified with your eyes. These people are somehow the ones you end up having this kind of bond with.
Gonçal is the one who leads the project
Gonçal: I wanted to be a record producer, I loved it and I dedicated myself to being a sound technician because of my relationship with music, because I didn’t have the ability to compose despite being a guitarist. Once established as a sound technician I started to get the production thing back, and to produce I had to have songs. It was a path that I learned until there came a time when we fed back on the songs, especially because I had many insecurities when it came to starting a band.
Julio: We didn’t intend to put our color on what My Captain was, because it was what he wanted, Gonçal chose the people who would be part of the group, and he chose the speech and the touch. It’s different from a group where you add colors and that ends up becoming a song. On the other hand, Gonçal was very clear about what type of letter, what type of message and sound he wanted.
And where does this desire to put yourself at the service of Gonçal come from?
Julián: It has to do with friendship and trust. I don’t think there are groups that apply it easily because within the groups, and I say this from my own experience, there is a lot of ego. What Gonçal has is respect and a tour where there are no stains that make you suspect. As a technician, as a producer, as a tour manager, as a friend. There are so many ties to a trajectory of so many years that it makes his resume very clean.
What goal do you have with Surprised Like Thieves?
Gonçal: The goal is to exist again, to notice that the group emits a signal and that it has its own discourse, elaborated and with more sense than ever. I see it as a refounding so many years later.
They are all Mi Capitán records, but this is perhaps the first one like the ones we wanted to do when we shared conversations about what it would be like to have a group together.
Julián: The band has to vindicate itself, it has to fight some obstacles which is the supergroup label. It happens when you take members from other groups and they call it that, and it’s scary when you read supergroup because we’re not, we’re a self-published group that can sell 250 tickets in your city.
We also have to overcome the obstacle of coming from a circuit that is indie when we really do rock. Within the rock circuit we are viewed from a certain distance, with a certain intrusion, because we come from some indie bands, but I learned to play the guitar by taking songs from Metallica. He came from thrash and the hardest rock; that it ends up making mine pop 40 is trajectory. With Mi Capitán from the first album we make rock, a very specific rock, and that is one of our aspirations. With this album and with the next ones to come, at some point we will have to break this prejudice of the rock scene and also have indie people see us as not an indie band.
You define yourself as a rock band
Gonçal: We all agree on a pleasure for aesthetics, whether it’s the Black Crowes’ Southern Harmony, for some generations, and those who don’t, the Beatles’ White Album. Our coincidence of musical tastes is exaggerated. There is a common point of aesthetic understanding that the band carries out in a very honest way, and that is that it is a lot of rock.
Julián: Rock is very grateful, pop has a round aesthetic theme where you have to be very careful how you treat the song. For us, rock from the beginning was the schoolyard, when you went out to get on your knees, to get your clothes dirty, a game in the rain. And suddenly you say “is this song ready?” because it’s intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, chorus and out. With Standstill, with lesbians, with Egon Soda, the architecture of a song is baroque, the twists, the chord changes, the lyrics are different. A rock song by My Captain is a stone from Stonehenge, it is square and will last centuries.
Is it what has made you continue?
Gonçal: It is what has made us continue after 6 years without publishing. Now it will be 3 that we don’t play live. Beyond the pandemic, it’s been a long time since we did either of the two things, publish or play live. We could have ended, and if it had been up to me it surely would have happened. It is thanks to the band, thanks to Julián and Ferran and the spirit of the group behind it that this has not happened and that we have released this album.
Are you rehearsing?
Gonçal: Yes, the album was recorded last year, and it’s an album that has to be rehearsed because when you record an album you don’t record the song exactly as you play it live afterwards.
Julián: They are demanding songs. There are groups that work with a clapperboard, with bases, with hearing aids, with helmets and such. My captain is a garage, monitor, spacious, that is very well integrated, if not everything wobbles.
How do you see the future of rock?
Julián: Obviously new songs and new groups have to come out, new styles, new mixes, there are those who say that trap is the new punk, a type of opinion that you have to know how to respect or understand, in order to respect them later. On the other hand, I see that more electric guitars are being sold than ever in history, and it will not be for trapping. There are indications that perhaps denote a magma that is moving and that has not yet come out. It may be that in ten years there will be a generation next to Seattle or La Garrotxa that will bring out a new rock movement, a new type of electropop or whatever it is that makes everyone drink from the classics.
Gonçal: It’s very difficult for rock to disappear because of the power it has. From time to time things like the Arctic Monkeys come out when it’s AM, or Queens of the Stone age with Songs for the deaf, or the Strokes with This is it.
Julián: I saw the Taylor Swift concert the other day, and she comes with a rock band.
Gonçal: That has to do with psychedelia, with Tame Impala because rock as a genre also feeds, as it did in the 60s and 70s, from sister genres. The White Stripes did an amazing job, and they’re much closer to the blues, like the Black Keys. Perhaps it will never be the gale of the 70’s or 80’s again, but grunge was already like rock understood in another way. It will never be that glamorous, macho, whiskery, bluff thing again, perhaps it will become more sophisticated to survive, but it will continue to exist and will surely come back stronger.
