Mazoni: "I have more sympathy for losers than for winners."

BarcelonaJaume Pla (La Bisbal d'Empordà, 1977) halted the Mazoni project in early 2024. He needed to rethink the future. He didn't rule out continuing to make music, but he opened the door to expressing himself artistically through literature. A year and a half later, Mazoni's pop melodies are scattered across the eleven songs on the album he's releasing this Friday on the BankRobber label: Flags for colorblind people. It will premiere at the Vic Live Music Market on September 17, with Aleix Bou on drums, Natán Arbó on bass, and Emili Bosch on guitar. "A very classic lineup," admits Pla, happy to be back on stage.

Have you taken advantage of this year and a half to gather new ideas?

— Yes, I've listened to a lot of music, but it hasn't been a time of getting a lot of ideas from other people, but rather of reconnecting a little with my musicality and having a good time.

The first song on the album, A little corner of peace for everyone, synthesizes almost all possible Mazoni?

— People who have heard the album before its release say it's very Mazoni-esque. I think they mean it reminds them of the Mazoni of the early albums because of the choruses and verses. Perhaps one of the songs that best exemplifies this is A little corner of peace for everyone, which is the first song I made after announcing I'd taken a break and wanted to write outside of music. And that song came out, very pure. Then others came along, and I decided to stretch the thread of songs instead of literature. I didn't have to force myself to make the song come out, maybe because I was trying to do something else.

Sometimes it happens when you're not obsessed with doing something, that's when it comes most naturally to you.

— Yes, this has been the story of this past year.

Can the album be interpreted as an album about your relationship with music?

— Yes, there is a song that speaks ironically: The kitchen is closed. You should tell me your interpretations of the others, because apart from this one...

For example, Faith in sadness, where you say that no past time was better, as if it were a song to convince you that you still have interesting things to say in the future.

— I hadn't thought of this one like that. Maybe there are always a lot of these things subconsciously. The song Fucking social networks Maybe so, because one of the things I've noticed most relaxing about this time has been not having to post anything on Instagram. This has more to do with my music career.

AND Shiny fish, with the image of the fish swimming alone?

— Yes, here too a little, although it fits with other songs of mine that have that point of positive vindication like I will come like a plague and Purgatory, old songs that go: "Come on, come on, come on, even if there's no one around, you try to get ahead yourself."

You have a song titled The chains no longer bind meWhat chains bound you?

— When I write a song, I usually have the melody first, which gives me an idea of the kind of tone that what I'm going to tell should have: more melancholic, happier, sadder, angrier. When I start writing, it takes shape and usually ends with a feeling or emotion. And when I'm already in that emotion, I use all the experiences I have at my disposal to talk about it. In this case, I'm talking about something to which one is dependent, or has been tied, but instead of writing about a very specific story, I try to think about all the times I've been in that situation. That is to say, in the end, the protagonist is the emotion or the feeling; in this case, dependence. A little corner of peace for everyone It would be the conflict. I also try to make the songs as open-ended as possible, less referential. The more open the message, the more people can connect, than if I take it too private.

This is what Bob Dylan understood right away.

— Exactly. "Times are changing," you can always say. There will always be times when they can change. It goes without saying, "this politician, I don't know what."

Although there is always a time to do what Neil Young just did with Big crime, the anti-Trump song. There are emergencies that call for you.

— Yes, yes, and very brave of him. It's very good. In some of my songs, the percentage of something that happened to me as it is isn't too high. Usually, it's like a kind of patchwork of different stories.

I couldn't write a biography of Jaume Pla by listening only to Mazoni's songs.

— Exactly. When this topic comes up, I sometimes tell people that some of the third-person singular I've used are much more autobiographical than the first-person songs. I remember that with the song I don't have time They thought I was really stressed. And I said, "I have so much time, I've always had so much." What happened is that I was singing about the kind of person I didn't have. If you want to look for me, you might find me more in the third-person songs.

You mentioned social media earlier. When you started, there weren't any, so you've seen the whole evolution. Have you had any bad experiences?

— I'm very anti-social media. Some say it's a love-hate thing. In my case, it's a need-hate thing. It's clear that at the level I function, it's very difficult not to use social media, because you can reach a number of people much faster. But everything that entails, everything to do with the algorithm, what it teaches, what it doesn't teach, what it rewards, what it doesn't reward—all of this seems very perverse to me. I think people used to have more choice; maybe it took them longer to get to things, but they could decide more... Now, you quickly have someone who says, "You, listen to this group too, you'll like it if you like this." Let me get to my rhythm!

Musically, in the diptych of sadness you use Amaia Miranda's classical guitar in Trite song. And in the next one, Faith in sadness, Raül Gallego's trumpet. Have you looked for colors that distinguish the songs?

— Aleix Bou, who is the producer of the album, told me that I made a type of root songs sixties, very pop and British, like the Kinks and the Beatles, a lot from 1966-67, which is something that perhaps there aren't that many in Catalan... Now there's a bit of revival of guitars, with The Ludwig Band and Dan Peralbo, but it's more American. In that era of British pop there is a very wide palette of colors, and it's a place where we feel comfortable. For example, the trumpet of Sad song can take you towards Penny Lane, by the Beatles. Yes, there is an effort to capture all those colors. sixties.

On your previous albums, you'd made an effort to distinguish them by pursuing a different musical aesthetic for each album. Now you've put that aside a bit. You didn't want to put so much pressure on yourself, right?

— Exactly. When I started writing songs again and thought about making an album, since I was having a good time doing it, I said: "Don't overanalyze your work. If you loved the Beatles as a kid and now you're coming up with these melodies, then keep going."

You've made a living from a musical project in Catalan. I don't know if your perspective is the same now. In other words, does your project have the capacity to survive for several more years in our musical ecosystem?

— I hope so, but I also think the industry has changed a lot, and now the young people doing projects are in a very different world than I am. I want to believe there's a piece of it for me too. When I stopped playing live a year and a half ago, these debates were on the table. What to do, how to continue, continue halfway, fold, continue. to sheetThe idea is yes, but I'm 48 years old and I'm also aware that I'm increasingly distant from things that are happening as trends, and I don't know how that's going to affect me. In any case, I already like that resistant point. I don't need almost anything, as I say in I will come like a plagueWell, a minimum subsistence level in terms of income, from people who come to see you, from interest, above all, because if you do things and see that there's no interest, that in itself puts you off a lot. It happened to me a lot with the English album. 7 songs for an endless night...

Yes, I remember we had talked about that one. concert in Reus with hardly any audience.

— Before Mazoni, I lived through many years in which the things I did had no return. And it's a situation in which, if I find myself in it, I won't be able to continue because it's very hard. My idea would be to continue.

Did you have a pillow to survive this year and a half without concerts?

— Yes. More or less, my first Catalan album was in 2006, and I was 29 at the time. By the time I was doing well, I was quite old, and I've always saved as much as I could. I don't have children either. All that infrastructure I have now, if I had children, would be much more complicated to maintain.

In Losing for winning You sing: "The passion of parents is the way of the cross of their children, and we carry the cross of triumph as children." Here I have to ask you if this comes from a personal experience.

— No, nothing. My father has never pressured me, but it occurred to me while watching a children's soccer game where my partner's nephew was playing. You see some parents pressuring seven- or eight-year-olds and you say, "Fuck, man, not that." And "we carry the burden of victory as children." I'm not saying this from personal experience, but because I think this culture of winners and losers has intensified a lot in recent years. The Champions League is contested by 30 teams, and it's a tragedy for the 29 that don't win. And someone who reaches the final and loses is devastated, when they managed to finish second! Besides, I have more sympathy for the losers than the winners. In movies, I've always sided with the losers.

This competitiveness also occurs in music.

— Of course. There isn't a uniform range of bands, but rather there are certain groups who receive tremendous attention, and all the other people who are fighting over a super-small piece of the show. The world could be more balanced. But the way we consume things is already like that. There are all these tickets for over 100 euros in super-giant venues that sell out quickly, and then it's hard to sell 10- to 15-euro tickets for smaller shows.

In the last year and a half, what concerts have you been excited about?

— I find it a bit difficult to go to concerts, especially if they're my own. It's a time when I can't rest because I'm analyzing, comparing myself, sometimes feeling a bit insecure, sometimes feeling indignant. I tend to enjoy concerts of styles different from my own more because they don't make me think so much. I like experiencing live music, but I must admit that sometimes I have a hard time feeling comfortable when I'm at a concert because there are so many things that distract me.

But do you feel comfortable on stage?

— On stage, yes, a lot. It's contradictory, because I say people should go to concerts, and I don't go. But it's also true that people who put on concerts should be fed by people who don't put on concerts. Because sometimes you go to a concert and most of the audience are musicians, and you say, "We're doing something wrong here." That's what happened when MySpace was around, which should have been called Backstage, because everyone who commented was a musician: "Your album is great." "Thanks, yours is great too." And there was no one else.