There are artists who don't have plan B, who risk everything on one card; For others, having other possibilities allows them to continue with their art, and there are those who, despite having a second option just in case, remain faithful to their vocation. Paula Valls is one of the third, and the reader may remember her signature on these pages during her internship, just a few months ago.
But if you listen to his music, you will understand what his mission should be, how his music can make our lives kinder and deeper. Friendly, although the topics she talks about are not, as she herself explained during Saturday's concert at Luz de Gas, within the framework of the Barnasants festival, to present her latest album, Començar de nou (Satélite K): a journey against the monster, in her case, an eating disorder that kept her away from the stage when everything seemed to be going her way. The next stop will be the Strenes de Girona festival, on April 5.
Accompanied by a spectacular trio - Abril Saurí on drums, Miquel Sospedra on bass and Moog and Guillem Callejón playing guitars and synthesizers -, Valls reviewed a few songs from the last album, starting with Que el temps passi, with a voice reinforced with dense textures , to follow the narration of his fight against the disease, in which he puts numbers and even talks directly about it in Filomena: "To understand that it will be / like this from now on / is to win". The artist from Manlleu stands in front of the piano in PV_01, in which, after admitting that she has "taken refuge in the dust of books", she remembers that "I cannot say the forbidden word".
But Valls does not allow the harshness of the situation to take over his music and smiles and his voice touched by soul illuminates everything in songs like Què he callat, Començar de nou or Sincera. He switches to English to sing his single Time, which advocates the fight against clocks, and takes us back to his first album, I am (Satélite K, 2018) with Monsters, when he didn't know what he was facing, and assures the public that he owes him an Apology – published after the album, almost as a coda. He continues with There is nothing left to cure, És estrany and No cal dir res to stand with the band and acoustic instruments on stage recovering Circles. There is so much to say that we could go around talking in circles, but perhaps we better listen to her.
Catalan version, here
