“April 20 is already on our calendar: every year, when the blessed date arrives, there is always a little commotion. The reminders arrive, the virality… It’s very good, that means that we are still there, in the hearts of the people.” You don’t have to be a great music lover to guess who has recently uttered this phrase and, ultimately, what band we are talking about. Few groups have such a close link with a date and month on the calendar thanks to a song: Celtas Cortos, like strawberries, are from April. At this point, Joaquín Sabina already knows who stole it.
Aware of this symbiosis, those from Valladolid have taken the opportunity to release a new album. The Upside Down World saw the light on the 19th and that same Friday and the symbolic Saturday the 20th, they filled the Vistalegre Palace in Madrid twice in a live double that, according to the chronicles, resulted in a great celebration. Celtas Cortos is already an almost forty-something band – the germ was born in 1984 although the band was officially founded two years later –, so they decided to have a good party accompanied by distinguished guests such as Miguel Ríos, Fito Cabrales, Rozalén or the Tanxungueiras, among others, as well as former members, such as the flutist and founder Carlos Soto. A good multigenerational cast and many emotions on stage.
It can be said that The World Inside Out is an album faithful to its principles. Celtas Cortos do not give an inch to new fashions and cling to the two styles that made them one of the reference groups of Spanish pop in the nineties: rock and folk with Celtic roots. That combination continues to run through the 13 pieces from start to finish along with the house’s other trademark: social criticism. Already veterans, Short Celts observe where the world is going and they don’t like it. A good example is the song that opens the album and gives it its title, in which they review everything that is going wrong, from cell phones frying the brains of young people to the fragility of the truth in times of fake news.
So that neither the party nor the demand stops, Cifu and company disembark this Saturday at the Razzmatazz 1 room in Barcelona as part of the Empremtes cycle. When asked by La Vanguardia, Goyo Yeves expressed his great excitement about returning to the room on Almogàvers Street, which brings back memories of his memorable sold-out performances in the old Zeleste. All the classics of the time will parade through the Catalan capital, such as They Can’t Stop Us, The Path of Time, Tell Me a Story, Tranquilo Majete or, of course, the very famous letter to that mysterious “chata” that an entire generation can recite by heart. . It won’t be the 20th, but the concert still falls in April.
