They are "four losers" who dedicate themselves to playing rock'n'roll

Barcelona"When the concert ended, the police told us we had to leave immediately, and we started running towards the car, chased by a giant horde of people. We started the car and then realized we were missing one of the guys..." It could be a scene from a horror movie, but it's one of those Ypnosi stories, "four losers who dedicate themselves to playing rock 'n' roll," as Mateu Alonso (guitar), Albert Aymar (vocals), Pol Ortega (bass), and Leo Suarez-Spanswick (drums), all born in 2002, describe themselves. "We're the saviors of a lot of people," adds Aymar. Losers or not, they can boast of songs like The village robber, Always think of him and The story.

It should be said that, in the eyes of others, Ypnosi is an exciting rock quartet, and theatrical in the sense of underground counterculture, responsible for a couple of albums: Friends forever (2024) and I feel bad laughing (Snow!, 2025). And contrary to what happened at that concert where legs had to flee, help me, enough people enthusiastically enjoy their live shows. Ypnosi would feel comfortable sharing a bill with bands and artists like Minibús Intergaláctico, Paupiripau, Mujeres, Ruinosa and the Strippers de Rahola and Remei de Ca la Fresca, with the Surfing Sirles in the audience. They stir up "older than new" influences, such as The Kinks, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, The Stooges and Red Hot Chili Peppers ("Blood sugar sex magic "It's a good car soundtrack," they recommend. But they do so with the raw energy characteristic of youthful spirit. "Our generation is perhaps disconnected from the music of our grandparents and parents, and some people who come to our concerts perceive them as something new, even though we're not really inventing anything new. But since they haven't seen rock concerts by people of their generation, they receive them as something they didn't know existed," they explain.

The key, then, is the age of the listener: "Seeing four grandpas on Harley Davidsons playing eighties rock is very common. The cliché we want to dispel is that rock is for old people and Harley Davidsons," they add, because "rock should be young." "I think we like that rock from the sixties and seventies so much precisely because at that time it was young rock made by young people. It was the ultimate liberation for young people." This helps us connect with that spirit,” they conclude.

As in this case, often one of the musicians starts a sentence, another completes it, and yet another stretches the thread to add references to Ypnosi’s repertoire, such as The Smiths and The Cure (who are invoked in It hurts me so much) or Pau Riba, Sisa, Adrià Puntí, Quimi Portet and Albert Pla, an ideal five that draws a possible musical cartography of the album I feel bad laughingThe first thing they've done is in Catalan, because "inevitably, Catalan has set the course" they try to follow, in their own way. However, the coexistence of influences is cordial, and "this album also includes references from other languages," because "everything influences and at the same time nothing influences the writing process."

One of the most successful songs on the album is The village robberThe song, which kicks off with a Stones-esque guitar riff and Dylan-esque spoken word, gradually builds ferocity as the lyrics detail the preparations for a heist: the queue for the train that will take the protagonist to the city bank, the pigeons he releases while thinking about the loot... and the retreat from one of them. "We really identify with this plot twist because we have a lot of crazy ideas, but in the end, we realize they're not feasible. Maybe 10% of them actually come to fruition," says Mateu Alonso. His bandmates agree: "We're daring, but only 10% of that daring actually makes it to fruition. We've had some huge ideas that are too far-fetched, too outlandish, or too provocative to perform live." Even so, they share the same unbridled joy they bring to their concerts, even if they don't always win over the audience, as happened in that performance where they had to be escorted out by...