2024-02-01 21:29:26
“Bad girls do it right,” said the singer MIA in one of her biggest hits. And, certainly, they are the ones who advance feminism, whether they are aware of it or not. Bad was the one who raised her voice, the one who exercised her sexual freedom or the first to put on pants. And Tiburona lives up to her name by representing those girls, bad because they are uncomfortable and because they don’t mince their words, who distribute slaps like bread. The candid, quiet woman went down in history. “If you do things like you always do, without questioning anything or questioning those who have always had privileges, then you will be liked. Otherwise, you run the risk of people not liking you. But we have come to speak clearly,” says Supercarmen (drums and vocals), who shares passion and stage with two other 30-somethings from Madrid, Rita Dolores (bass and vocals) and Laura del Amo (guitar and vocals).
The slow death that clubs in Berlin resist
They have been together for almost a decade. First in The Ladies and then in Juanita Banana, bands in which they gained experience and with which they reached that level of experience that they now exhibit in Tiburona, the name under which they were refounded in 2019. Their promising inertia was stopped with the emergence of the pandemic, that limbo in which so many aspirations disappeared: “We had released an epé just before and we were going to present it the same month that they confined us. It was a huge downturn. But, on the other hand, that helped us compose the first album, but not before sitting down to reflect on where we wanted to take this new project,” Rita recalls. From that time of forced recollection springs his debut, Alone and happy (Folc, 2021), a collection of fresh, sarcastic and continuous songs with respect to his garage roots, recorded at Paco Loco’s studios in El Puerto de Santa María. The trio will defend them live on February 24 in Córdoba, March 2 in Barcelona, March 9 in Castellón, April 27 in Madrid and July 10 at the Tsunami Xixón festival (Gijón).
In the middle of last year they went from slowing down to high gears when they won Villa de Madrid’s top award and signed for the Montgrí label (Cala Vento, Lagartija Nick, Biznaga), with whom they have just published their second reference. we become extinct (Montgrí, 2024) is a sample of furious guitars, beat flashes, accelerated surf, border winks and harmonized voices that go from the most punk rage to the melodic sweetness of the doo wop. With a foot and a half in the classic garage sound, Tiburona uses the other medium to develop a personal, contemporary and addictive proposal. “As we come from previous projects in which there was a very defined style, we had been adjusting to that. We have always followed that line of the garage, the ye-yé, the sixty, because it is something we have worked hard on, we like and it works for us. We are very creative in contributing ideas from these genres, but we have also wanted to continue expanding, opening our horizons and introducing more of our own tastes,” explains Rita.
Tastes that, upon further investigation, turn out to be as divergent as they are complementary and have served to give that patina of originality to their proposal. They are there, easily detectable. Supercarmen collects vinyl from the 60s: “Especially from Latin American garages, at a collecting level. I really like punk, punk rock and classic rock & roll. Laura is into folk, Americana, country… In fact, the tremolo parts on the album are hers.” And Rita confesses to being more eighties: “the post-punk, the punk of those years… Electronic stuff, even. Also British pop and rock.”
What they do seem to agree on is the transversality of the project. Feminism underpins everything. Although without being exclusive. “We feel that feminism is intrinsic to our proposal and we believe that this should also be the case in society. It shouldn’t even be an adjective. It shouldn’t even be necessary to mention it. That’s why we are a band, not a ‘girl band’, although we are proud to be one and we claim it,” Supercarmen insists. It is precisely this category that throws them off depending on the occasions indicated by the calendar: “It seems that because it is a group made up of protesting and hard-working girls, your place is only on March 8th. A lot is produced pinkwashing that month and our agenda is full of proposals, and there are times when we refuse to participate, especially if the proposal comes from production companies that do other things where we are not counted on. It seems a bit hypocritical to us. “If it is only to cover the quota for the ‘women’s festival’ we are not going to do it.”
Their commitment to feminism also guides them in the selection of versions with which they decorate their albums. If on their debut album they opted for Here in my cloud (Get Off of My Cloud) by The Rolling Stones revisited by ye-yé Sonia in 1966, now they undertake Love Potion No. 9 of The Searchers in Angélica María’s version from 1962. “It was fun for us to include a song originally performed by men but in a woman’s version, at that time when they perhaps didn’t make as much music.” Both accompany in their repertoire In Egypt it’s like this (Walk Like an Egyptian)the Bangles classic that they performed in collaboration with Los Jaguares de la Bahía – producer Paco Loco’s band – during the last day of recording Alone and happy.
They even dare to tread the always slippery slope of prostitution to denounce trafficking, pointing out them, the whoremongers, in naked lunchone of the themes that make up We become extinct. “The protagonist is a whore. We want to put the focus on him. Never, never in them,” says Supercarmen. And they do so by seeking inspiration from the novel by William Burroughs from which they adopt the title. “We didn’t know what name to give it and, more than the novel, we visualized naked lunch (1991) by David Cronenberg. The film has those unpleasant overtones, like a Series B. Furthermore, the title suited us because the protagonist is naked because he is consuming [sexo] and it seemed perfect to us.”
Nor is this inventory missing the traditional quota destined for the love-heartbreak tandem represented in cuts like Thinking of you, Favorite Person Pt.1 o May you die well; nor the review of other topics of social interest, as in Open relationship, Zero government or on the border event horizon, where they expose, without hot cloths, the serious climate crisis facing the planet. “It speaks of the imminent destiny to which we are headed if our actions do not change… Although changing them is not going to assure us anything either,” says Supercarmen. Curiously, it was its working title (We become extinct) the one that ended up giving its name to the entire album, as Rita explains: “We thought about it quite a bit and in the end we realized that all the songs, without intending it, had a shared idea that there are things that are becoming extinct… They can be both relationships , like the planet itself, like people, like many things. Or even concepts and ideas that, if they are not becoming extinct, should be extinct because they deserve it.”
The one that has finally been left out of the album “for logistical reasons” is Lovely poster. The single, published in March of last year and in a punk mood, harshly spoke out against a certain model of the music industry. Its lyrics speak for themselves: “They give you forty bands, you listen to a few. You don’t care about the rest because you love their Instagram. They recorded with Fulano, they know Mengana. We fill out the prefabricated inbreeding poster. (…) You don’t care how they play as long as they share drugs with the most beautiful people on the fashion circuits…”. Supercarmen clarifies that, in no case, have they wanted to reflect their own situations or experiences: “When you are in the world you end up realizing how everything works. There are many things that we criticize. Drugs, for example, are something that unites in this business and if you are not there you are often left out. Or, if you do not have a godmother or godfather you do not enter the slot, which is often ‘do you want to join this band? Well, put these others who are also with me.’ In that we have been a little more orphaned, we have had to earn it, they have never put us in the position of going hand in hand with anyone.”
He also emphasizes that they do not intend to judge the bands “because in the end” they all want “the same thing”: “We want to play and we want to be seen and we understand it. It is, above all, a criticism of the magnates, those people who are doing certain festivals and are not even in the circuit. The rooms are loading. They close them because they pay more. And they pay more because they have a lot of money, because they are companies and are backed by banks and big brands.”
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