One of the most particular music on the national scene during the first years of the new century was signed by the Barcelona trio Facto Delafé y las Flores Azules. After a few years it became Defafé y las Flores Azules, made up of Helena Miquel and Óscar D'aniello.
And the subsequent departure of the first in 2015 ended the project, and now they meet again to celebrate twenty years of the group's creation with a series of concerts. Today they play at Cruïlla XXS (Westfield Glòries, 7pm).
Helena Miquel: We stopped being a couple in 2009 and we continued working until 2015. Then I left because I needed to grow in some way and I had the feeling that I was very pigeonholed.
And he put out a solo album in 2017 that didn't do very well.
H.M. The truth is that the songs I composed alone came out a bit unintentionally, because I didn't consider myself a composer, but I was picking up the guitar at home and songs began to come out. I was encouraged to release the album, and perhaps it is true that coming from Delafé y las Flores Azules and being the familiar face of it, I thought that the reception would be greater. It wasn't like that, but since I've lived through many situations and I come from where I come from, I didn't take it as a failure either. I published it in 2017. It was more of a reality check. And shortly after the album came out I got pregnant and my twin daughters were born a year later. And that also marked another stage in my life and I also needed to stop for that. I spent a year totally stopped dedicating myself to motherhood, and it has been later, over time, that that need has rekindled in me again, to be part of something creative.
What was the spark?
H.M. In the midst of a pandemic, I called Óscar. He always told me that if one day I felt like doing something musical, I should let him know. And then I had that need. I asked him if he wanted to do a song. He told me yes, and from there we started to get excited. One day he told me that next year it would be twenty years since we started and excitement was generated again. And we thought that we could do a concert to celebrate it, and then we could do some more. It will be a mini tour of ten or twelve concerts to celebrate since we started. Óscar started in 2002 and I in 2003, the year Mar el poder del mar came out.
Óscar D’aniello: When he told me about the song, I replied that I was starting a song project and he said he wanted to participate. And it's a song that hasn't come out yet because it's very long and it's not finished. The one that came out in March, Here now, we did it later and it has a theme that goes very well at the time we are living.
H.M. As the song that Óscar was working on is not commercial at all, when we decided to do the tour they asked us that as a presentation and gift it would be nice to make a song that could be a single. And it's very nice because the lyrics are beautiful. That was magical.
The lyrics of the song sound like a reunion and even a sentimental reconciliation. Can you give that feeling?
H.M. We have always played with this. But here is a simple parallelism.
O.D. She talks about a reunion, but if you want to take her to the pop universe, the reunion works better where a little sentiment is added, almost as a couple. In real life, each one continues with their children and their respective partners, but the song talks about a reunion, which we have experienced but led a bit to fiction and non-fiction.
Is the sound dress yours, Oscar?
O.D. Yes, for a few days we talked about the song as heavy because the sound is so epic. And that must also have been partly because during the lockdown I listened to a lot of heavy metal. And with this song we have returned a little to the beginning; now we are very focused on making songs with the mood of when we did, for example, January on the beach. Something that I denied for years, and now you comfortably return to your origins, with a speech that is so emotional and that reaches.
Why only one song? Aren't you tempted to make an album?
H.M. No. It was clear that it was a reunion quite marked in time, everyone is clear that we have come back to do this. We've always done what we wanted, that's why now, when we finish this tour we have no idea what's going to happen, where we'll be or...
O.D. What I like about this is that Helena got into making a song that started out as three minutes, and turned into something endless. Right now it's 22 minutes long and it's not over yet. And when she's ready, what are we going to do with a song that long in the year 2022? It is throwing more stones on your own roof than anything. Now musicians at times can't be very musicians because we have to produce products. As an artist, at least me, you always have the handicap of deciding: I do what I have to do or what comes out of me. It is best to find a balance. But we have always done what came out of our noses, as Helena says, and that has played against us most of the time.
How are these concerts?
H.M. We played with the same partners with whom we did our tour Vs the trumpets of death. We play all the songs that we think people want to hear, from our entire career. We start the concerts at the Strenes festival in March, now they play here, then Madrid and more places.
How was that first comeback with the public?
H.M. It was wonderful, at the Auditori de Girona. Indescribable, going on stage and all the people on their feet applauding as if it were a "thank you for being here"… I don't know, I'll never forget it. We had not opened our mouths and that is what happened.
I insist; if at the end of this series of concerts someone comes and asks them to do more?
H.M. We don't know what this tour will have given us. I think we will rethink everything when we have finished it.
The door is open.
O.D. What is not is closed. What I have quite clear is that time passes faster and faster and that we both like the scenarios. And if after the tour we still have a good time, maybe we'll decide to do more concerts.
Why do you think they like their songs so much? Because of the letter, the spirit, the emotion they convey?
H.M. For all the things you've said. What people have always transmitted to us is 'how you make us dance, vibrate, cry', that is, emotion. And besides, people feel very identified with our lyrics.
O. I have to talk about the past. What we contributed at the time in an indie universe of guitars, a lot of pessimism, and songs with a lot of melancholy, was freshness, a certain elegance, the boy-girl factor, and a positive way of saying things but from a slightly melancholic point of view. . We did a kind of rapped pop that talked about sadly happy things, and that connected a lot because there was nothing like it. We made urban pop music, now there is a lot of this, and speaking of the everyday, extolling love...
Were they pioneers of urban pop music in Spain?
O. That's what the critics have to say.
H.M. It's ugly for us to say it, but seen over the years and the distance, we do mark a before and after in the way of making music here.
