After 15 years of Manel, a year and a half after putting the group on standby, having announced a tour and sold out some concerts and with five songs published on platforms as a sequential preview to whet your appetite, Guillem Gisbert (Barcelona, 1981 ) publishes his solo debut, Balla la masurca (Ceràmiques Guzmán), eleven songs that are not a break with the past, but a step forward, where Dylanesque narratives such as Les aventures del general Lluna coexist – more than seven minutes of folk rock with the basis of The Ludwig Band – with songs played by trap such as Hauries hagut de Comer, between pop and author songs, marking the passage of time and its own change of era, such as the title track of the album or Miracle a les Planes, in which he remembers his student days with lyrics based on Gabriel Ferrater's way of doing things. We talked at the foot of the Mapfre tower, that he opens the talking album with the Arts hotel.
Do you dance the mazurka, like the title of the album?
To talk about emotions that interest me, I like to put on a shell, a costume, which gives more play and is a universe that provides many references. Curiously, where the mazurka is danced a lot is in the Philippines.
Dancing the mazurka and making it dance is the life of the show...
The character's adventures are very bitter, it is a way of observing the act of going on stage in the most negative way possible. The key word in this song is please, because the engine that makes you do something like this has many facets, but pleasing, the search for applause or the opinion of others is part of the life of the show in a way that many Sometimes it is exhausting.
There is also the step of getting older.
Anything that involves making an album about getting older makes me very terrified, but it's there, and at thirty years old I wouldn't have been able to play it the same way, as somehow happens in Miracle a les Planes.
The album begins by making the Mapfre tower speak, as if they were the bell towers of Verdaguer...
And how wonderful! It was the first thought, that a conversation between two modern buildings would be good, and of course, it was almost inevitable to get here. There is also a generational thing. In Manel's last EP, in Tipus Suite, the death of Mary Santpere appears in September 1992, and the group's second album refers directly to the Barcelona Games. There is a fascination with the era, because you feel legitimate to write about it. the world when you are ten years old, in some way, and feeling entitled to speak about something is very strange, you don't know exactly what belongs to you and what doesn't. But there is something about the view around the Olympics that I notice a lot, and as a Barcelonan as well, obviously.
It also brings out the Agbar tower...
That came later, it is more modern, but here it was no longer sought, it was a culminating verse that worked very well as a final image: “Dalt of the Agbar tower snorts a trompeter angel.” I doubted that there weren't too many towers... You can choose to leave it in or take it out. When you are making a collection of songs, the references between them can be interpreted as a repetition or as a proposal, and in the end it depends on the face you make, when you explain it.
It's the first album since Manel's indefinite hiatus, which you never know exactly what it means.
No, we don't know either. As we are quite aware, and it is very likely, and right now I believe it to the core, that we will make records again and give concerts again, speaking in other terms would be strange.
Have you felt very different during the process of making the album?
The last 15 years my job has been writing songs, with Roger, Arnau and Martí. With this part of the equation removed, I had to see how it's done. There is a whole part that has to do with the steps of a song that in Manel's world are not part of my negotiation, because there are many talents necessary to make a song that I do not have. Furthermore, there is a part of validating the idea, of finding security when working on a song, which I have had to find alone, and at 42 years old it is good to do so. But basically it was the first time, until now my experience was to write a line or have an idea or perhaps a verse and then three more people would come in to comment on whether this was here or there and I would return with renewed confidence, to sometimes nuanced, to one side or the other.
That's over now.
Well, it was throwing miles a bit blindly. With a producer you have a relationship in which you also exchange ideas and sometimes you don't agree, but from another side. It's not the same as with the group.
The album is very eclectic, very varied, in comparison.
Maybe so, but with Manel we had the feeling that the albums were quite eclectic, especially the latest ones, with many genres and many different sounds, a classic formation of guitar, bass and drums has coexisted with electronics and a more hip part. -hop. Just by working with different producers I wanted to continue a little in this line, accept that you have been working with the same people for 15 years and it is good to let the air flow and meet and work with other people. A second way of working to keep the tap of songs open, relearn many things and find different alliances.
It's different from Manel, but not that much... although perhaps there are some more digressive themes...
The thing is that on the artistic side, I don't have a need to break with what we were doing. Many of the songs on the album, in the end, or at least the first touches, are thought by a person who is within a band. There is an impossible exercise: imagining what this album would be like if he had made it with them. Would the songs be longer or shorter? Would there be fewer digressions? Don't know. The first person you have to distract and please is your partner, and in this sense, you get out of your love bubble a little and make a more shareable product. A song like Les aventures del general Lluna could have been done by Manel, but one like Empatia total possibly not, because of the darkness, because of the climate.
It's not a breakup, no.
It also has to do with the personality of the producers. Waltzing Matilda and Balla la masurca, for example, were produced by Anxo Ferreira. I worked on the songs with him in Madrid and they have all these very digital textures that already give them a very specific personality. On the other hand, Estudiantentina is made with a formation that is the Rondalla Puiggraciós. I like that these types of different aesthetics coexist, it makes me more distracted and for some reason I have never had the sensitivity to do just one thing, practice a single genre and be the best at it. I will never be the best at anything, but in a specific musical genre, less so, I don't have the talent to be either.
Isn't he a singer-songwriter?
For some reason, the concept of songwriter seems more comfortable to me, but in the end it doesn't matter. It is true that here we have the singer-songwriter associated with an austere production, perhaps simply because of the imaginary of cheap production, and I am not aiming for this sonority.
You won't stand alone on stage with the guitar or ukulele!
I don't have the talent to do it either. Albert Pla, for example, has a great ability to fill the stage alone with the guitar. If there had not been a band, I would never have stood on stage, I would not have had the drive to do it alone, I would have dedicated myself to something else.
They maintain Manel's record label, Ceràmiques Guzmán, and now they are not alone, there is also La Ludwig Band...
You don't have to imagine a four-story building... It's the four of us, but the one who really takes care of it is Martí, the bassist, who also manages my project. At the time of role specializations naturally, he was more interested in the whole industry part. We made it to manage Manel's albums and The Ludwig Band suggested that we do the experiment of co-publishing their album with Indian Runners, their record label, and for now we have done that, but it is very complicated to grow as a record label from where we are doing it. There are many hours of work and then, obviously, no records are sold.
It was not born as a side business.
The thing is that to be a business it would have to be other things, because selling records is not a business, it would have to be management, or a series of things that don't... that it's a lot of work and that doesn't... The one from La Ludwig does it. We go because we really liked the group, because we were excited and so to try it out. And of course, now there's my album, yes.
Thus, with the other Manels the relationship continues...
Yes, with Martí logically, for the album, but I have recorded the voice of some songs in Arnau's (the drummer) studio, because recording the voice is a very psychological thing and I am very used to working with him. And I spoke with Roger this morning, we speak practically every day.
Have you had to put up barriers with them, to avoid the routines of the years?
Of course, because if not, it would be cheating. There is something curious in creative teams, which in the end is a convention. They are people whose opinion counts when shaping a project. But you can't ask someone outside the project for an opinion, because everyone has one, everyone thinks differently, and you can't be open to other opinions because it gets disrupted. Boundaries have to be solid and impermeable, but when you have worked for so long, they are opinions that can be destabilizing, if not powerful. Sometimes I thought about how one or the other would manage it. There has been an added bonus of common learning that is noticeable, but each one already has different things. I didn't have to slow down much, because I was very clear about it. When you miss your colleagues the most it is in the invisible things of the band's day-to-day life, the thousand and one decisions that you have to make, which are the complicated ones, the absurd decisions. Making an album is an infinite succession of decisions, and here I have realized it, because the discussion is more striking, but these small day-to-day decisions are the ones that have surprised me.
Did you work song by song or with the entire project in your head?
The difficulty was that with a new producer, who perhaps you have just met, you have to generate a common language that I have had for many years, I had built it in a very natural way. And I have complicated my life, because I have worked with five different production teams and I have had to do the establishment of a common space many times, but I also wanted the change of role, the group has a very necessarily closed part, and that, on the other hand, was just the opposite and asked me to be a social animal, which is something that I can activate in my personality, but that I can also deactivate with great pleasure for years and years. There has been a part that had to do with taking this step of being a little more extroverted. If I had only worked with one producer I would have had to do it only once, and instead it has been months and months of doing it. This has produced very different ways of working and has been very enriching, a year of my life very different from the last fifteen, which is what it was about.
Are you worried about what critics will say about the album, if it is very continuous, a breakup...?
A critique is like a conversation with someone with whom you share interests in a discipline, and when you are 20 years old, critique is important because it legitimizes your role, your attempt to belong to a world that fascinates you and to which you want to belong, but now It is rather to be part of a dialogue and a very opinionated field. I haven't done something that is invulnerable to criticism, but I see it more from a conversation than someone who can separate good and evil.
It is not a leap into the void either.
I have a career behind me, but releasing an artistic product is an act of vulnerability. And as a good music lover I have dedicated myself to cruelly commenting on the solo albums of the groups that have broken up, a genre in itself. But life is strange, and suddenly you are that one. Life has to go on, and now you understand the reasons why those albums came out.
You will no longer be able to reject Paul McCartney albums...
Exactly, but I'll keep doing it. I recently read a somewhat cruel analysis: the group is not a personality plus others, but rather like a kind of protective sheet in which you see the silhouettes and a lump, and that is the group. When you see human beings, personalities appear with all their edges, all their defects and their virtues. Human beings are never as fascinating as that lump on the sheet. McCartney had to be a little cornier than necessary, Lennon when he started talking about politics was a bit tiresome and pamphleteer, the other was impossibly sarcasm and Ringo, well, he was Ringo. I now notice that in the interviews, my character, the one called Guillem Gisbert and who makes albums, is different from the character that is part of the group, in that you are not completely yourself.
Were you surprised to sell out the first concerts without having presented anything at all, just with the name?
I was starting from scratch, I didn't even have social networks, and to try to do the tour that I will do in the summer I had to start communicating that it existed, and the way was with these first concerts, the Apolo in Barcelona (May 3) and the two from the Strenes de Girona festival (May 4). I was surprised that the tickets were sold, and I was relieved, too. Then I sent a message to the other three, because in the end Manel sold these tickets, I didn't sell them. Now it will be interesting to see to what extent a project with my name is more or less able to continue selling tickets. Will have to see.
How will you present the live show?
We will be three people on stage, Jordi Casadessús –former member of La Iaia–, who has produced some of the songs and we have understood each other very well. There is also Arnau Grabulosa, very young and very good, and Glòria Maurel, also very good, on drums. And there will also be programming, synthesizers, a little of everything.
Will there be Manel songs?
It's complex, but I have some ideas. I'm not particularly good at recovering, but it's funny because I've been writing songs for many years, but I only have eleven, right now. I'll have to peck something, but I'll try to do it judiciously and make sense.
Without the ukulele.
I won't go with a ukulele or play Manel's greatest hits, it would be absurd. Furthermore, I really want to try to make the two projects coexist, in a well-articulated way. But you will have to think about it and see it. Everything has its intricacies, those of us in the group have been understanding them over the years, and a career as a solo artist has other different things that I have to discover little by little.
Catalan version, here
