In the city that gave birth to Flamaradas, you can’t hear the river that runs around it. When the sun sets and the streets become quieter, you can clearly hear the constant, muted sound of the A2 highway. Just like when after running to catch the tram and grab a seat, you hear the sound of your own blood coursing through your head in the background. El rumor eterno de la autopista (The Never-Ending Rumble of the Highway) takes us back, once again, to the background landscape from the band’s previous records: suburbia, where industrial parks rub shoulders with allotments and highways; where music, too, is edgy and nomadic, because it comes and goes with the cars driving by with their windows rolled down.
It’s a familiar set for a series of songs written in another space and time. Because this record should have emerged on March 21, 2020, and instead we’re listening to it now, in a different world to the one in which it was conceived.
Flamaradas is a Catalan band led by Daniel Magallón, a deep-voiced, contemporary singer born in Sant Joan Despí. His music resounds with nonrevisionist echos of the voices of classic singer-songwriters and the beats of popular music, but also folk, psychedelia and classic rock.
The band’s songs reach out to us from the most immediate present, with lyrics somewhere between surrealism and day-to-day existence that frequently comment on life on the fringes of the big city.
