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Madrid might be the cultural capital of Spain, but the feisty, iconoclastic city of Barcelona has long been home to a bubbling stew of inventive new music. One of the scene’s biggest exports is a group whose catchy, dancefloor-ready electronic sound is not at all what one would expect from Spain—especially considering that their songs are often sung in English and laced with a sweet, infectious silliness.
The “group” is actually two friends—Mister Furia (Salvador Rey) and Professor Manso (Alex Llovet)—and they call themselves The Pinker Tones.
“There was this wild energy loading up during those two years of touring,” Furia says, explaining the rationale behind the album title. “Once we got into the studio for a few days, it was like a huge discharge of energy. We always have a tendency to go in different directions once we have done something, so the aim is always to reinvent ourselves as artists. It’s fun as well. This time I think we’ve created a more direct album. The last album was like utopia—the way we’d like things to be—but this is more of a description of the world we live in.”
Furia and Manso first met in college, but went their separate ways until years later, when they kept running into each other during a three-day stretch in Barcelona. Furia was working on the music for a television series, and asked Manso to collaborate. They immediately got very excited about their synergy.
“The first thing we noticed was that it was relatively easy to work together,” Furia recalls, stressing the fact that although the two work well as a team, they are contrasting personalities. “I’m the analog guy, and Manso is more the digital high-tech person. He’s really rhythmic, and I’m really harmonic. He’s the computer drum, and I’m a tube amp. It’s a bit of a yin-yang story, but we could spend a lot of hours together without fighting too much.”
More about partying than arguing or pontificating, Wild Animals opens, startlingly enough, with an almost Beach Boys-like a cappella chorus singing the lyrics to “Hold On.” A funky electronic beat soon kicks in, and the album is on its way, but as they do with much of their music, The Pinker Tones paint a thoughtful message—“Hold on to your dream, because you’re a long, long way from home… ”—behind the layered facade of electronics and tongue-in-cheek humor.
“That was something we were telling ourselves all the time on the road,” Furia explains, referring to the song as a meditative haiku. “You have to tell yourself not to fall into despair, because sometimes home seems really, really far away. You are far from home because you are chasing the dream, so don’t forget the dream—[that’s] the dream of the nomad.”
Asked why so many of their songs are in English, Furia insists that “the songs select their own language,” and points out that the group also sings in French, for example. Both he and Manso grew up listening to American music, and were influenced by their extensive touring in the U.S. last year, but they never set out specifically to target an English-speaking market. “[It’s a sign of] the good and bad things of globalization,” Furia says. “We probably have more in common with a kid growing up in Tokyo or Washington, D.C., than someone growing up in a small village outside of Barcelona. Actually, I won’t judge whether it’s good or not, but it’s a reality.”
Having found success in the global marketplace, The Pinker Tones have taken their role as “Million Colour Revolutionaries” to heart by keeping the door open for other artists behind them. “We’re trying to help the people we value and whose music we like,” Furia says. “We try to give them a bit of support. We would be very selfish not to do so, no?” He cites the pop electronica artist Pecker, who turned to The Pinker Tones to produce his latest album at their Pinkerland rooftop studio. Despite a troubled music industry in Spain that is being wracked by piracy, Furia sees a strong, creative scene in Barcelona. Noting that the port city has always “been on the periphery” because of the attention paid to Madrid, he says Barcelona’s mix of cultures has created a thriving music incubator, with such artists as Ojos De Brujo, Muchachito Bombo Infierno, Macaco, and Amparanoia being the most visible examples.
As if to accentuate the point, “Happy Everywhere” is the first video to be spun off from Wild Animals. Dressed in matching black outfits, the duo sings in a lazy, feel-good groove about the merits of both the city and the country, all done with a bit of their typical sly, loopy humor. Even so, because Professor Mansa’s previous career was as a photographer and Furia was a writer, they are very conscious of how their videos are made, even as they hand over the job to others.
“We can’t keep our eyes away when [a video] is in the process of being made,” Furia explains, “because we come from the field and we know exactly what we expect. When we ask somebody to do something, we have a clear idea of where we want to go. Once we see the project is being well cared for, then we just step away and give complete freedom.”
Looking back to The Million Colour Revolution, he cites the video for “Kharma Hunters”—a delightful animation that’s undeniably cute, even as its marching beat keeps your toe tapping. Although the song has semi-controversial lyrics (“All politicians are crooks! We’re the Kharma Hunters…”), Furia says the director was aligned with the group’s approach and ran with the idea. “‘Let’s give it pop attitude,’” he recalls. “‘Let’s not make it angry.’ It’s a very strong statement, but in a very funny way, like Andy Warhol meets Monty Python.”
A more serious message is embedded in the pop confection called “24” from Wild Animals—a testament to the importance that The Pinker Tones attach to their mission, as well as their music. The song gets its title from the generation that Furia describes as “too young to be old,” with 24 being symbolic of the age at which a person is on the verge of the first quarter-century milestone. The unusual lyrical structure includes no verbs— just contrasting, and somewhat haunting, statements like “No silence/more fear.”
“We’re seeing a lot of young people who have given up already,” Furia laments, “and we completely disagree with that. There are still a lot of causes to be fought and a lot of things to be done. You can’t give up.” And one thing seems certain: The Pinker Tones never will.
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