Hinds are a raucous bunch – everywhere they go it’s a mess of high-energy larks and good-times. With their new album ‘I Don’t Run’, the four-piece show themselves as a force to be reckoned with.
Hey Hinds, it looks like being in this band is the most fun. Is it?
Ana: It really is. All our friends always want to come on tour with us. That’s a good sign. We know how to tear up a room.
How was the whirlwind that was releasing your debut album?
Amber: It was good. At the beginning, it was a little bit too crazy with the touring and everything. We had to get used to everything, but now, we are. We’re ready.
So it must have been nice to go home to Madrid to write ‘I Don’t Run’?
Carlotta: It was cool. We don’t know how other bands do it, but we really can’t write on the road. We have our minds in another place, not on writing, because for writing we need an intimate place, to sit down, to be chill and to freely talk about whatever we want, so we always do it in Madrid. This time was better than writing the first album.
Ade: That first album was so tough. I still remember it like a nightmare. We were so tired.
Carlotta: We had one day between two huge tours, and we had to use it to write. It was just too much. This one, it was cool. It was compact; we have eleven blank spaces, we have to fill. It’s not like on the first album where you’re not even sure if you can write a song or an album, so all of a sudden, this is a feeling I remember. I remember we can write an album. It was faster to choose what we liked.
How long does it take for a Hinds song to come to life?
Ana: Usually it’s really long. We enjoy doing a lot of parts, bridges, intros, outros; it’s never just five chords. We like playing with it. Sometimes it’s not too hard, it can be a one-day thing but then a lot of times, like with ‘The Club’, it can take months. Carlotta: ‘Soberland’ comes from a very old idea. We keep all the ideas we have and a lot of them we don’t see anymore but this one, Suddenly you rescue it, you change it a little bit, and it works.
Ana: We do that all the time, changing something, change it some more. We make so many changes; you wouldn’t imagine how many changes a song can have. Every little detail is looked at. It’s never easy, it takes so long.
Amber: Because of the way we write, we have a lot of filters all the time. Every song has to go through at least five filters, but there was one song, ‘Valencia’ (the old name for ‘New For You’) that was so fast.
Carlotta: We had ten minutes left in the studio, ‘shall we jam?’ ‘Ok, come on.’ And it was done. Boom, so easy and so pure.
Is it true that one of the reasons you sing in English is so your parents don’t know what you’re singing about?
Carlotta: Yeah. My mum is obsessed with ‘I Will Send Your Flowers Back’ from the first album, and she can’t believe we’re singing about sad things. She doesn’t want to accept it. It’s not that we feel embarrassed about what we’re singing though, it’s just easier to create a new you.
Ana: Writing the way we write, it’s like someone putting your diary online. Everyone can read everything; what we really feel, what we’re ashamed of, what we hate and what we love. Doing it in English feels safer and more beautiful. It also gives it this poetic thing; I wrote this song instead of just feeling this way.
It seems like this time out; Hinds are fearless.
Ana: Fearless? Absolutely.
