Mazoni: "If you want to look for me, maybe you'll find me more in third-person songs"

BarcelonaJaume Pla (La Bisbal d'Empordà, 1977) stopped the Mazoni project in early 2024. He needed to rethink the future. He didn't rule out continuing to make music, but he was opening the door to artistic expression through literature. A year and a half later, Mazoni's pop melodies are spread across the eleven songs on the album he is releasing with the BankRobber label this Friday: Banderas por daltónicos. He will premiere it at the Mercat de Música Viva de Vic on September 17th, 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 used this year and a half to get new ideas?

— Yes, I have listened to a lot of music, but it hasn't been a period of taking many ideas from other people, but rather of reconnecting a bit with my musicality and having a good time.

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

— People who have heard the album before it's released say it's very Mazoni. I think they mean that it reminds them of Mazoni from the early albums because of the choruses and verses. Perhaps one of the ones that exemplifies it the most is A small corner of peace for everyone, which is the first song I made after announcing that I would take a break and that I wanted to write outside of music. And that song came out, very pure. Then others came, and I decided to follow the thread of songs instead of literature. I didn't have to force myself for the song to come out, perhaps because I was trying to do something else.

Sometimes it happens that when you are not obsessed with doing something, it comes out more naturally.

— 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. In the others, you should tell me what your interpretations are, because apart from this one...

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

— I hadn't thought of it like that. Maybe unconsciously there are always many things like this. The song Putas redes sociales perhaps yes, because one of the things in which I have noticed more rest this time has been not having to publish anything on Instagram. This one does have more relation to the musical career.

And Shiny Fish, with the image of the fish swimming alone?

— Yes, a little here too, although it fits with my other songs that have that positive claim point like I Will Come Like a Plague and Purgatory, old songs that are: "Come on, let's go, even if there's no one, try to get ahead yourself".

You have a song titled The chains no longer bind me. What chains were binding you?

— When I make a song, I usually have the melody first, which gives me an idea of the type of color what I'm going to tell should have: more melancholic, more cheerful, more sad, more angry. When I start writing, it becomes more concrete and usually ends with a feeling or an 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 talk 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. In A small corner of peace for each one 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 much into the private sphere.

This is what Bob Dylan understood right away.

— Precisely. "The times are changing" can always be said. There can always be time that can change. Needless to say "such and such a politician".

Although there is always a time to do what Neil Young just did with Big crime, the song against Trump. 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 has happened to me exactly as it is is surely not too high. Generally, it's like a kind of patchwork of different stories.

I could not write a biography of Jaume Pla listening only to Mazoni's songs.

— Exactly. When this topic comes up, I sometimes tell people that some of the third-person singular characters I've used are much more autobiographical than the first-person songs. I remember with the song I don't have time they thought I was very stressed. And I used to say: "I am very stressed, I have always been very stressed." What happens is that I was singing about the prototype of the person I wasn't. If you want to find me, maybe you'll find me more in the third-person songs.

You were talking about social networks before. When you started, there weren't any and, therefore, you have lived through the entire evolution. Have you had bad experiences?

— I am very anti social media. Some say it's a question of love-hate. In my case, it's a question of necessity-hate. It's evident that at the level I operate, it's very difficult not to use social media, because you can reach a lot more people much faster. But everything that it entails, everything that has to do with the algorithm, what it shows, what it doesn't show, what it rewards, what it doesn't reward, all of this seems very perverse to me. Before, I think people could choose more; perhaps it was harder for them to get to things, but they could decide more... Now, you immediately have someone telling you: "You, also listen to this group, you'll like it if you like that." Let me get there at my own pace!

Musically, in the diptych of sadness you use the classical guitar of Amaia Miranda in Canción trita. And in the next one, Fe en la tristeza, the trumpet of Raül Gallego. Have you looked for colors that make the songs unique?

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

On previous albums, you had made an effort to make them unique by pursuing a different musical aesthetic for each album. Now you've let that go a bit. You didn't want to pressure yourself so much, right?

— Exactly. When I started making 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 these melodies are coming out now, then go ahead, keep going."

You have lived from a musical project in Catalan. I don't know if your perspective is the same now. That is: does your project have the capacity to survive for several more years in our musical ecosystem?

— I hope so, but I also think that the industry has changed a lot and now young people who do projects are in a very different world from mine. I want to believe that there is also a piece for me. 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 onleaf? The idea is yes, but I am 48 years old and I am also aware that I am getting further and further away from the things that are happening as trends, and I don't know how that will affect me. In any case, I like that resistant point. I need almost nothing, as I say in I Will Come Like a Plague. Well, a minimum of subsistence in terms of income, of people who come to see you, of interest, above all, because if you do things and see that there is no interest, that 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 concert in Reus with hardly any audience.

— Before Mazoni, I already lived many years in which the things I did had zero return. And it is a situation in which, if I find myself, I will not be able to continue because it is 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 the first album in Catalan I made was in 2006, and I was 29 years old then. When things went well for me, I was already quite old, and I have always saved everything I could. I also don't have children. All this infrastructure that I have now, if I had children, it would be much more complicated to maintain.

In Perder por ganar you sing: "The passion of parents is the via crucis of children, and the cross of triumph we carry from a young age". Here I do have to ask you if it comes from personal experience.

— No, nothing. My father has never pressured me, but it occurred to me watching a children's football match in which my partner's nephew was playing. You see some parents pressuring seven or eight-year-old children and you say: "Damn, man, that's not it." And "we carry the cross of triumph from a young age" I don't say out of personal experience, but because I think this winner-and-loser culture has intensified a lot in recent years. The Champions League is played by 30 teams and it's a drama for the 29 who don't win. And someone who reaches the final and loses is devastated, when they've managed to be second! Besides, I have more sympathy for losers than for winners. In movies, I've always sided with the losers.

This competitiveness also occurs in music.

— Sure. There isn't a uniform scale of groups, but rather there are certain people who receive brutal attention, and all the other people who are fighting over a tiny little piece. The world could be more balanced. But it's just that the way we consume is already like this. There are all these tickets over 100 euros in super-giant venues that sell out immediately, and then it's hard to sell tickets for 10 to 15 euros for smaller concerts.

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

— It's a bit difficult for me to go to concerts, especially if they're my kind of music. It's a moment when I don't rest because I'm analyzing, comparing myself, sometimes with some insecurity, sometimes getting indignant. I usually enjoy concerts of styles different from mine more because they don't make me think as much. I like experiencing live music, but I must admit that sometimes it's very hard for me to feel comfortable at a concert because there are many things that distract me.

But do you feel comfortable on top of the 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 make concerts should be nourished by people who don't make concerts. Because sometimes it happens that you go to a concert and most of the audience are musicians, and you say: "We are 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.