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Dec 20, 2024 Web Exclusive By Mark Redfern Photography by Dario Vazquez

My Firsts is our email interview series where we ask musicians to tell us about their first life experiences, be it early childhood ones (first word, first concert, etc.) or their first tastes of being a musician (first band, first tour, etc.). For this My Firsts we talk to Hinds.

The Madrid-based band released a new album, VIVA HINDS, earlier this year via Lucky Number. VIVA HINDS is the band’s first album since becoming a duo again. Hinds were founded by co-vocalists and co-guitarists Carlotta Cosials and Ana Perrote in 2011, but for most of their career they’ve been a four-piece. Ade Martin and Amber Grimbergen left the band in 2022, returning them to a duo.

Pete Robertson (The Vaccines, beabadoobee) produced the album, which was mixed by Caesar Edmunds (The Killers, Wet Leg) and engineered by Tom Roach. It was recorded in rural France.

“This isn’t a rational album, this is made with emotions, in no specific order,” Cosials said in a press release announcing the album. “We never sat down to think what we should write about, we sat down to write about what we were going through. We didn’t choose a ‘new look,’ we didn’t wanna pretend to be mature, or appear as a more sophisticated band. To me it is cohesive, but it’s not a fairy tale or a brainy narrative. It’s heart-driven.”

Of keeping the band going despite the line-up change and other challenges (the pandemic, no label), Cosials said: “We started the band because we are so safe and comfortable with each other. Our relationship is unbreakable. This connection between us hasn’t changed since the very beginning. We still finish each other’s ideas, laugh at each other’s jokes and rhyme each other’s lines. Maintaining that enthusiasm for music and for Hinds through the years may seem extremely difficult to find, but it’s something that only can happen with your very best friend.”

Read on as Cosials and Perrote discuss getting jilted and kicked out on a supposed romantic Christmas trip to NYC, early experiences with concerts and festivals, and the disastrous first concert Hinds played at a comedy club.

First pet?

Carlotta Cosials: My first pet was a fish I won in a fair and it died three days later.

First time you fell in love?

Carlotta: I remember perfectly every person I’ve fallen in love with, and the first one was from my kindergarten when I was four years old. His name was Alejandro and he was super blonde. I think it’s the only blonde person I’ve fallen for now that I think about it.

First time your heart was broken?

Ana Perrote: Before our debut album came out, we toured the U.S. with a New York City boyband. They were opening for us, it was one of our first tours, they were our age and they were so cool I inevitably fell in love with the guitar player. I had a boyfriend back in Spain, which I ended up breaking up with as soon as I landed back home. I wasn’t the only one in the band that fell for one of the boys in that band, so we (Hinds) decided to go spend the Christmas holidays in NYC. My guy ended up leaving the city without even telling me, and we got kicked out of the apartment where we were meant to stay by another one of the guys. We had to buy clothes in a thrift store, and our A&R from the record label had to let us crash in her house as we had no money and no more New York City boys. We wrote “Soberland” soon after that.

First record your parents played for you?

Ana: I have very fond memories of my dad playing The Creedence Clearwater’s Cosmo’s Factory in the car in the summer. My parents didn’t play much music in the house in our day to day, so if those songs were playing it meant we were in a happy place, going to the beach on holidays. I still have their copy of the vinyl with me. My mum, who’s French, would always want to sing Maxime le Forestier. Her mother passed away when she was young, so I know she thinks of her when French music plays and I try to sing the words I remember with her.

First concert you went to?

Carlotta: I could never forget this. It was Avril Lavigne in her album two, with my dad.

First music festival you went to?

Ana: All of my first big live show memories are from FIB (Benicassim) Festival. I would save all my pocket money to buy the ticket for the summer. As we are from Madrid, a lot of bands would miss our city in their tours, so it was a huge deal to see so many bands in the same weekend. I went for the first time when I was 16, so I had to ask CC [Carlotta] and our friends to buy me beer as I had a special under-age wristband. I especially remember seeing Arctic Monkeys headline there, being lifted on my friend’s shoulders, thinking the world was ours. It was actually after that trip, that me and CC started to play covers together.

First time you got drunk?

Carlotta: I didn’t start drinking till I was legal to do it, I’m a nerd. In the summer of my 18th birthday I started drinking and smoking all at once.

First job you had?

Ana: First job I had was working at events helping serve catering. but we actually had a first job together, me and CC, before Hinds. We used to hand fliers for a nightclub in the streets in Madrid during the summer. We would get paid 1€ per person that we got in. We got so good at it that the owner didn’t wanna work with anyone else after trying us. Also, when we decided we wanted to play full electric and not acoustic anymore, I signed up for a medicine testing weekend in a hospital, when I was 18, to buy my first fender amp, which I still have!

First time you got fired?

Carlotta: I’ve never got fired. Yet.

First instrument?

Carlotta: The order for me was: piano (5 years old), violin (10 years old), drums (14 years old), guitar (19 years old), vocals (20 years old). I do all of them very poorly.

First time you performed in public?

Ana: I used to do theater in school, and CC did too as well as some TV acting. But the first ever time we went on stage to play, it was together. We got a gig as a mid-show break at a stand up comedy place in Madrid. It was back when we hadn’t written any songs, we were still learning how to play the guitars, and we played very random covers like “Hit the Road Jack,” “Banana Cakes,” and The xx. That show went pretty well, but the second time it was, still to this day, the worst time I’ve felt on stage. It was a complete disaster. For starters we were both wearing heels, so we were SO uncomfortable. As we didn’t know how to play with picks, we had the brilliant idea of putting fake long nails, but doing it ourselves and the ones you get from the supermarket. Mid-show, they started falling apart and breaking, so it was impossible to hit the chords. After two songs, CC, dead serious asked me “should we leave?,” and I told her we couldn’t, the audience was right there lol. It was so, so bad that we stopped playing, without even talking about it. None of us wanted to feel that humiliation ever again so we carried on being friends but didn’t pick up a guitar together until like two years after.

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Hinds’ previous album, The Prettiest Curse, came out in 2020. Read our interview with the band about it.

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