Utopia is a good place, dystopia is a bad place, and Estopía is the place of Estopa, a country built based on rumba, rock, rancheras and the verses between reality and dream with which the Muñoz brothers have built their own country to celebrate 25 years on stage. “We wanted it to be a tribute to our first album, but then those things don't work out,” David Muñoz acknowledges with the sincerity that characterizes the duo's voice. “You go song by song and this one comes out rumbera, this other a ranchera, the next one grunge,” says Jose about the ninth studio album, which delves into new sounds without losing the rumbera essence that has accompanied them since they were released. meet with La raja de tu skirt and El de en medio de los Chichos.
That there was a desire for Estopa was demonstrated by the speed at which tickets for his new tour were sold, “after five minutes the system had blocked, it gave what it gave,” remembers David of the day they went on sale – and the tickets for their concerts at the Estadi Olímpic and the Metropolitano were sold out in hours, which eliminated the doubts with which they presented both dates months ago. “We had a lot of fears, but not that it wouldn't be full, but that people would think we were overflowing,” adds Jose. "At night we were afraid: what a mess we've gotten ourselves into, we're going to tell them to take it away." But in the morning the mood changed. “The world belongs to the brave,” David repeated to encourage himself, and Jose wondered, “Who misses the penalty? "The one who throws it."
The twelve themes of Estopía are made up of many “colors”, as Jose draws, “we try to make it eclectic, rich in melodies and stories” like those that make up La rumba del Pescaílla. “We were walking through the Gràcia neighborhood with a friend and, suddenly, I saw a plaque on a doorway that said: 'In 1925, here goes néixer Antonio González, el Pescaílla.' And I thought: this is a song,” David recalls. “Why in Catalan? Because the plaque was in Catalan, there we put rhyme and rumba”, “and Catalan”, Jose points out. “It is a tribute to Pescaílla, to Catalan rumba and to Barcelona.”
The couple is not too worried about the possibility of Catalan rumba becoming a world heritage site or not, “we're going to like it anyway, it's our thing,” says David. Of course, they are clear that “a Madrid rumba is not the same as a Catalan, Andalusian or Extremaduran one,” as Jose points out. “In our case, we use both Catalan and Madrid rumba,” adds David, “I consider Chichos or Chunguitos to be Madrid rumba, Peret and Pescaílla are Catalan, while Triana and Pata Negra are Andalusian rumba. "Mestizaje is the best antidote against fundamentalism, whoever wants to seek the cat's three feet is because they are a little controversial and nationalist." “From both sides,” adds Jose.
Nothing has changed in this quarter of a century in the way the Cornellà brothers compose. “We continue composing with two guitars, at my house or at his, and depending on our mood, a rumba, a ballad or a cha-cha will come out,” says David. Inspiration can come from anywhere, although their DNA is the music they listened to at home, the one their father played them: rumba, Chichos and Camarón.
“In the past your parents played music for you, now it is your children who play the music that they hear, unfortunately,” says Jose with a smile, “I trust that my son will grow up and listen to real music.”
These dozen songs on the album are arranged with a clear and studied intention, to the point of modifying the waiting times between songs to increase the drama. “Although it is then listened to in random order, everything is designed as if the entire album were heard, it is our duty,” Jose recalls, a job they do on all their albums by repeating certain patterns. “The first is the representative one, the second a color, the third is a rumba, La raja de tu skirt was also the third song on the album.” A musical journey wrapped with a cover inspired by the painting The Garden of Earthly Delights, which came with its dose of controversy on networks due to the use of artificial intelligence.
Created like all the previous ones by the illustrator Jandi, a friend since high school, the cover represents a dreamlike scenario where the estopero universe is represented, “there are all the songs, Me climbs like a spider, La raja de tu skirt, Fiñito de Cornellà , Red Wine, is the cover we are most proud of, then people understand and misunderstand what they want.”
Behind the cover are hidden rock melodies like Tan dulce with a nod to Iron Maiden and reminiscences of Extremoduro. “We are what we eat,” says David. At the other extreme, Without Ink in the Pen is an approach to crooner melodies, “it may remind you of Michael Bublé.” Family Passage tells a fictional story, a literary play about someone who sees his life ruined in an instant, while songs like No dice ná or Alone have their origin in David's vivid dreams. “It was sung to me in my dreams by a colleague on the guitar who is a dental technician and who has no idea how to play, the sequence is the same as what I heard in the dream.”
The stopic universe closes with La ranchera, a festival theme with a beer flavor and the aroma of churros at dawn that marked the Muñoz's first foray behind the camera to record the video clip. “The song was already a script in itself,” explains Jose, “like many of the songs we have composed, but with this one we knew that anyone else would have done worse.” “We have made more than 50 video clips, we must have learned something,” adds David, who explains how they called colleagues to act as extras, which has resulted in the best video clip “in relation to budget and result,” according to Jose. “It was a real party, no one performed, total Stanislavski method.” Like the lives of these two brothers, who have found their place in the world between dreams, beers and songs.
