¡Viva Hinds!
E.
I love music. Often, I’ll say, “I love music of all kinds,” but that’s kinda wrong. I like what I like, and sometimes that’s jazz or old-timey rock from the 70s or early 80s punk or whatever. But mostly, it’s simply that a song will come on and I’m like, “What… is that??” And that’s how I know.
"PLAN OF TONIGHT: place: Denver venue: Lost Lake Lounge time: 8pm (on stage) come & save us 🌚 .. picture by @danieltopete cause he's the best"
My kids and I experience music discovery in a variety of ways in this day and age. Pandora and Spotify are great at bringing different songs and artists to my attention (this article explains the process of creating Spotify’s magical “Discover Weeklies”), but they are still robots trying to mimic the human touch of an old-fashioned mixtape or a long afternoon session sitting on the dorm room floor of your friend’s older brother and listening to one song on an old record, and if you like it, then he’ll play a song from a different album (maybe a different singer, genre, time frame) that will help you truly understand the first one.
Anyway, Hinds.
I “discovered” Hinds several months ago when I was in a pit of music boredom. It wasn’t quite as dire as those dark days of the late ‘90s when Britney Spears and Cristina Aguilara ruled the airwaves, but it was close. I felt like there had to be a lot of music out there that I just wasn’t hearing, that would rock my world and eardrums, but where?
Madrid, apparently.
Carlotta Cosials of Hinds at the Echo, Los Angeles, April Fool's Day 2016 - photo by EvilTapo
Hinds [FKA Deers (FKA = formerly known as; you’re welcome)] is a group of four young women from Madrid, Spain, whose jangly garage grungy songs are mostly in English. They sing about… well, who the hell knows? I sing along but for me, their songs are more about the feeling of the music and inhabiting their space for 3 to 5 minutes. When I listen to Hinds, I don’t give a shit. It’s like finding an old version of myself in which I’m maybe 22 and I work at a crappy job and I hate my boss and I drink too much on the weekend and maybe I hooked up with some guy I met in a club - or maybe it was his roommate? I don’t remember – but the girls in Hinds? They get that version of me. Their songs *are* that version of me.
¡Viva Hinds!
That time Hinds played "Davey Crockett" at the Echoplex and everybody ran onstage for a dance party. April 1, 2016 Photo by EvilTapo
More Hinds:
Check this out. It's not their most popular song (if you're new to Hinds, listen to "Garden" or "Bamboo" as a gateway drug), but I read that they made this video by themselves in a rush before going on tour and tried to make it look like a rap or hip hop video. Which, in itself, is sort of adorable.