Sofía Comas, the rare Spanish indie singer

“Let us flee backwards or forwards / let us avoid this instant.

/ I want to be who I was or be a promise / but never an open wound”.

With these verses thrown from the depths in the midst of the pandemic, Sofía Comas realized that her new album, which she had been trying to limit for months, was going to have to continue that flight.

At 37, she is an artist who has gone through "many gigs."

Although her music could be classified as Spanish indie, it doesn't fit the mold too well, since it's rare within the genre: it starts with electronic bases and mixes them with medieval melodies.

Before singing and composing, she studied performing arts and co-founded the Zuk dance company.

She later became a member and vocalist of the indie pop band Tucan Morgan.

She took advantage of her ability to imitate voices to work as a dubbing actress in the songs of

and

and she was also a private English teacher to earn extra money.

From that first song,

, the second solo work by this Spanish singer-songwriter was developed —although she was born in Montreal due to her parents' work assignments—,

, an eight-song album that is, In the words of the artist, "a return to the ancestral in difficult times, a hedonistic prayer, a song to the poet" and it will be released in February 2023. This Sunday, December 11, he also premieres his show My flowers will not end

within the programming of the Essencia festival at the Cuarta Pared theater in Madrid, in which he stages the songs from this forthcoming album.

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Lorca's star never goes out

Comas receives EL PAÍS at the headquarters of his record label, Popstock, in Madrid.

He wears his hair up and a white lace choker.

He talks fast, waving his arms a lot, and responds energetically, opening his eyes wide.

“In 2020 I was preparing for a new project after

[his previous album of his, with which he tried to ease the pain over the death of his father].

He wanted to make a record about the city where he lived, Madrid, its streets, its elements.

I listened to a lot of zarzuela, I researched a lot, but nothing came out.

I was in a very hopeless moment and the song

came up .

Everybody was anxious, they said: 'How good we were before!

How are we going to be after?'

This topic reflects that general malaise of the covid era ”, he recounts.

It is curious that his idea at the beginning was a record about a city, because nature is omnipresent in

: “This work was born from the need to return to the ancestral.

I was guided towards the most primitive, which is the connection of the human being with the rocks, the plants, the sky, the animals”.

The artist was inspired by Lorca's verses to create simple images loaded with symbolism with elements of the earth.

In the song

she sings: "A blind wolf howling at a star / mistakes it for the moon."

The album is not only a return to the atavistic in the thematic, but also in the formal.

A friend of his told him that his music had a medieval touch: “I have a way of making melodies that is very modal and at the same time very pop.

The first medieval used very simple melodies.

It was also very important to her that her songs work naked, only with voice and piano, and from there dress them up.

On the other hand, she wanted to give importance to percussion: “Everything in life begins with a drum, a bomboneo that is the heart of our mother, and that is already percussion.

So, since she was talking about very organic things, it seemed essential to me ”.

The result is eight electronic music songs that counteract simple, very urban sounds with an old touch.

The composer observed that, since the pandemic, more and more tarot cards were being sold and more esoteric shops were opening: “We had embraced scientism (not science) so much that people were looking for a return to the mysticism of the beginning of the time.

I also wanted to pray to the magical and embrace the intrinsic spirituality of the human being, and that is what I did on the album.

For example, she relied on numerology to determine the number of songs.

Comas defines her album as "a prayer and a song to the poet, who is the shaman, the guide, in times of darkness."

The image of the red bird that gives her work its title comes from a fragment of a Nahuatl poem of a pre-Columbian prince named Nezahualcóyotl.

“In pre-Columbian society, two words were used to designate a concept.

'Flower and song' means poetry and precious bird.

And the 'red bird' is the poet”, he explains.

The homonymous song that opens the album was composed one night precisely with a poet friend, Gonzalo Escarpa, after he drank a

and she a

: “One day, Gonzalo and I discovered that when we drank those magical concoctions things were generated.

The first ingestion was in Cercedilla (Madrid).

I wanted to get out of there with the lyrics of the song.

We wrote the chorus drunk on my cell phone notes.

The next day, I woke up thinking it would suck.

And I was surprised!"

The singer in a promotional photo for her 'single' 'La tormenta', dressed as in the music video for the song.

Comas has resumed dancing in the video clip for

, one of the two

that can already be heard from the album.

“It is a song of love and seduction.

The dance of the video is directed towards the viewer.

She wanted the body to be very visible.”

To write this topic, she was inspired by María Sabina, an illiterate Mexican healer, who healed through poems.

In order to have her visions, she ingested mushrooms that she called the "holy children".

The song says: "I am a fir tree woman / and you holy child / and the eagles of the sky / now fly by our side."

The other theme available is

, whose video shows a “bizarre celebration”: “I wanted to get all my friends together in a house to have a party.

The album is a bit hedonistic and seeks comfort through enjoyment”.

's film

: "She was a Polish gypsy poet, the first to spread her texts in writing .

In the film there is a scene in which the matron of her tribe blesses her: 'May you walk lightly on the earth.'

It seemed very beautiful to me and I understood that the storm was like a baptism”.

Lorca or the magical concoctions with his poet friend are just a couple of examples that make up the infinite patchwork of the singer's universe.

After the interview, Comas goes down to the street and adds one more: “I can't wait to hear again the album that Natalia Lafourcade has just released.

Do you know him?

It is very good".