Friends since kinder garden, Dulce Pájara de Juventud is a band born in the industrial belt of Barcelona (El Baix Llobregat). They bet for both epic and psychedelic songs. With a tight balance between the vocal parts and the instrumental development (that the band use as a field to express emotions) the compositions of this album stick to your skin like mosquitos in September.
The presence of expanding keyboards, chorus lines that don’t brush away the idea of epic and “uouoooos”, and a solid rhythmic base could bring to our mind present bands like Deerhunter, Arcade Fire or Fang Island. One listens to “Gigalove” on the subway and can’t stop turning up the volume and hitting the floor to the rhythm of the drums.
The tube seems to go upwards instead of sideways; the bands songs look you in the eyes and remind you that the sun will come up tomorrow. The band seems to have a contagious wish of freedom in their souls. That feeling of letting go that makes life worth living. Songs that always look forward, with an internal epic that portraits the emotional roller coaster we all live with post adolescence.
Emotion, desire, lack of control (“Dear Bruno”), mysticism, fear (“The Fear”), death (“Junior vs. Death”), sadness, love (“Ani”) and disenchantment…All this palette of emotions are present on the album (In fact Daniel Johnston -The small, giant emperor of showing sincere emotions- is one of the bands artistic reference)
Santi García wise production on the album highlights the expressive versatility of Dulce Pájara de Juventud’s compositions. The band shows its easiness to add different instruments (keyboards, strings), vocal lines and all types of atmospheres (incredible instrumental interlude “Nacer 3” with vocals by a mad south American TV preacher used as a crescendo) so that new colours appear with each listen.
The cut that opens this collection of songs, “Feel”, is an invitation to taste their world of feelings and brings to our memory the Boo Radleys of “Giant Steps”. In other moments of the album we can find landscapes surprisingly reminding us of Flaming Lips or the first Mercury Rev (the good ones we mean).
The use of psychedelic melodies that made these bands big is one of Dulce Pájara’s identity signs. “Gigalove”, is for example, a giant balloon filled with helium that goes up to never come down, like the best songs by the Pixies. We wish all the Young bands around now had the same ambition, boldness and rhythmic and melodic sense as Dulce Pájara de Juventud.