With three albums on the street and their recent signing with Subterfuge Records, Neuman (Paco Román and Fernando Lillo) holds on as one of the most important indie groups in Spain.
Simplicity and tenderness even in their shoegazer songs, makes them the Spanish indie caress. Songs that you never get tired of and that you can use like green tea liquid soap: As much for relaxing than for recharge one’s batteries.
If you don’t know them and you have a little of musical sensibility, we propose you to listen ““I have the will”. You won’t forget the first listen.
Paco Román answers the hysterical interview to the good boys of Neuman.
Paco began with another band “La fábrica de la luz” and when it got dissolved, he continued composing until he found Fernando, pianist that completed Neuman’s equation. Which were your aspirations when you began to play together?
Years before Fernando came in, I played with a lot of musicians, I used piano many times but when I heard Fernando with his piano and we began to play together there was something special, some chemistry, we felt the same and he felt identified with what I was expressing in my songs, the time gave us the reason and we have been growing up together.
You have, on our opinion, some of the most beautiful ballads and mid times of Spanish indie scene. Which are your sources of inspiration for this kind of compositions?
Thank you very much!
Above all, what we try to communicate are moods: Love, friendships… are the main arguments that I talk about. This emotion, to keep the song’s creative moment, is what I try to endure on the LP in order to keep all its emotion.
All your tracks give off some kind of melancholy, like a kind of pretty sadness that recovers your songs from the top to the end leaving you like if, suddenly, someone tokes you the blanket in winter. Is it hard for you to create happy stages for your songs?
Our previous albums are melancholic, although some songs are luminous, and they don’t stop being covered with sadness. Is the personal factor what defines a bit all this stuff. It doesn’t mean that I was sad in those albums; it’s only that I got this nostalgia. On the last LP “By fear/I love” I have changed the city I live in, now I live in Granada and love again, friendship, has made that in this point the songs are maybe more “luminous”. Now I can clearly see that in Neuman’s albums it is very important what I am living at the moment.
Let’s come back to Maths class. Find the X:
Plastic Heaven = 2011. Familly Plot = 2012. By Fear/Hi Love= 2013. X = 2014.
An album per year. I love it to be like this, it says a lot about us and except “Bye fear / Hi love” the entire albums circle 77 min. of time. For 2014 we’ll make our best album. We are working on it, we are taking it slow ‘cause we have been 3 years without stopping 15 days non-stop.
You have recently signed with Subterfuge Records. Record Label champion of independent music in Spain. Have you decided another goal in mid-term? Something that you’d like to achieve as a band the next years?
It has been the boost that we needed, something fantastic, very exciting, on a short term we have a surprise that we’ll reveal shortly. To us is very important and we appreciate very much to have been signed up. Without any doubt is a big responsibility to keep going on and making great albums beside them.
At whom will you throw a of Hello Kitty knickers?
I hope I could throw them to Lou Barlow, with a bit of luck, now that “Sebadoh” are together again… hehe
In which national Festival that you haven’t played yet would you like to play?
FIB 22:00h
As creators of beautiful songs, we’d like to know: Which are for you the 3 prettiest songs you’ve ever heard?
Loro “Pinback”
Stay Home “American Football”
Not a friend “Sebadoh”
Fill in the gaps: Music to us is…
EVERYTHING.
Lasting the official video, we’ll finish the interview with a link to the acoustic video of the song “By Fear/Hi Love” from your last EP with the same name. Explain us, what did you wanted to communicate with this song?
The message I wanted to communicate is bye fears, keep beside the things that block you from being yourself, keep beside what people can think about you, the fear of giving important steps in your life and say hello to adventure, to new loves, say hello to the fact that everything can go better, say hello to a new life, because I think that our lives are too short for being unhappy, that’s how was born “Bye fear / Hi love”, it was all very visceral.
