Carlotta Cosials of Hinds yawns so big, I can almost hear her jaw cracking. Cosials and her partner-in-Hinds Ana Perrote are on holiday in Portugal. The night before, they attended the Vodafone Paredes de Coura music festival where their friends Fontaines D.C. were performing, and where the duo attempted some “Hinds-washing” on the Irish post-punk group—essentially their version of Jedi mind tricks. Sometimes it’s intentional, when they’re trying to manifest something. Other times it’s in the air surrounding the two.
It’s impossible to not get caught up in the Madrid-based duo’s friendly energy. They try not to cut each other off, but they also give each other assists when they talk. At one point, they start playfully pushing and pretend-slapping each other, their arms a joyful tangle. They have their own Laurel and Hardy routine, with Perrote stepping in as the straight person. They’re so fun, I wish I were on holiday with them.
It hasn’t always been fun for Hinds who, against all odds, are releasing their fourth album, Viva Hinds. Since 2020’s The Prettiest Curse, there have been more losses than wins for Cosials and Perrote—at least at first glance. Their longtime bass player and drummer both left the group. Their management left them. Their label left them. Their tour dates—like all musicians’—left them. What remained was their fanbase, whose cries of “Viva Hinds!” inspired the album’s title. With so many blows against them, one can’t help but wonder if Cosials and Perrote didn’t think the universe was trying to tell them their time was up. “The universe wasn’t saying that,” says Cosials definitively. “Some people were trying to stop Hinds.”
“We had bad luck for a couple of years,” admits Perrote. “But we were so sure we weren’t finished—if anything, the harder it got, the more we realized how much we wanted it and how much we cherished what we had.”
“Sí,” Cosials agrees. “And the more we had to prove it.”
“We have a word in Spanish: ilusión, which is a mix of enthusiasm, excitement, and hope. We had that feeling back.” — Ana Perrote
Before returning with Viva Hinds, Cosials and Perrote had to prove their determination to themselves. The flip switched for them in fall of 2022. Their moods improved, the songs started flowing, and a way forward became clear. “We have a word in Spanish: ilusión, which is a mix of enthusiasm, excitement, and hope,” says Perrote. “We had that feeling back.”
Hinds’ native tongue makes its first appearance on record with Viva Hinds’ pre-album single “En Forma.” This is a big change for the duo, who primarily aim to emulate the English-language music they listen to. Even so, you’d think writing in their first language would be easier for Hinds, but Cosials is quick to point out that this isn’t at all the case. “We don’t know all the Spanish words, but we definitely know the context of each word,” she says. “We know if it’s silly to say this or that, or cheesy or too poetic, or too simple. In English, we don’t know that much. We don’t know the connotations. That makes us a little bit more free.”
“The way we write is us chatting in Spanish,” adds Perrote, “then we find the words in English. When you break that order between talking as humans and making it into poetry, suddenly we’re talking in the same language of poetry and it becomes very real. There’s nowhere to hide.”
The songs on Viva Hinds—including the Beck-featuring “Boom Boom Back” and “Stranger,” featuring Grian Chatten from the aforementioned Fontaines D.C.—were written between Los Angeles, London, and Madrid. They bumped into Beck at a screening in LA, and over the course of the week that they spent together they came close to getting into the studio. “If it doesn’t happen when it’s happening, it’s too much admin to deal with it after,” says Perrote. “We were flying back home and I said to CC, ‘I don’t want to be a pain in the ass, so I’m not going to insist, but I think I can send Beck one more text asking if he actually wants to do the song, even if he doesn’t come in to the studio.’ As soon as we landed, there was a text from Beck saying, ‘Wasn’t I going to sing on one of your songs? How do we do this?’” Beck sent his vocals to Hinds for the single, but when Hinds opened for him in Madrid during the summer of 2022, they recorded all their conversations backstage on their phones, grabbing ad libs to bring “vibe and realness” to the song.
It was “Boom Boom Back” that also connected Hinds with songwriter/producer Sean Silverman, whose name appears in many of the credits for Viva Hinds. “Boom Boom Back” was the first song they completed together, finalizing it in just four hours. Silverman’s involvement got Hinds out of their comfort zone and into places they wouldn’t have gone to writing on their own. This pushed them to see how far they could go, as well as seeing where they didn’t want to go. “It’s not common to feel good on a creative and human level and have fun with it,” says Perrote of Hinds’ dynamic with Silverman. “When we found each other, we stuck together. He really trusted in the project when no one was trusting in the project. We couldn’t find a management deal. We couldn’t get a record deal. Now, everyone wants to work with us because the songs are being well received. Back then, seeing how much he believed in us gave us a lot of confidence.”
“We have a motto for this new album: ‘We do what we can with what we have.’ But I think it’s going to last forever.” — Carlotta Cosials
Hinds brought Silverman to the UK for further collaboration, putting everything they bought for these writing sessions on credit cards, then returning them after they wrapped. Cosials and Perrote crashed on friends’ couches, but they rented Silverman a place to stay and used it as their home studio. Their sessions were shut down quickly by complaining neighbors. “We tried to stay quiet so they wouldn’t notice that we’re making music,” says Perrote. “That’s why ‘The Bed, the Room, the Rain and You’ is super sweet and the tone is super low and the melodies are mellow. All that quietness came out of the condition. We were doing something pretty hardcore, and we just had to tone it down. It wasn’t the intention. It just worked out that way.”
Armed with songs, Hinds wanted to record away from home to remove themselves from their daily responsibilities as well as their friends and family so they could fully focus. France is the halfway point between Hinds and their UK-based producer Pete Robertson (formerly of The Vaccines) and Grammy-nominated engineer Tom Roach. They took a chance on the Airbnb homes they recorded in, zooming in on the listing’s photos to determine if the acoustics would be favorable and hoping for understanding, music-loving neighbors. They took a 15-hour drive to the French countryside, loaded up with their equipment, twice, for 10-day recording periods. They worked from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day with a brief break for lunch and a little siesta in the afternoon. These unselfconscious moments are captured in the candid video for “The Bed, the Room, the Rain and You,” which is shot on Super 8 and takes the viewer behind the scenes of Viva Hinds’ creation.
Meanwhile, the “Coffee” video sees Hinds as mechanics in an auto body shop. In “Boom Boom Back” they’re Beck’s bodyguards, though he’s not actually featured in the clip. The surreal “En Forma” traps the two in a tiny house, with clotheslines populated by socks and T-shirts criss-crossing the space. “Superstar” is a relatively straightforward live performance with many closeups. While each video from Viva Hinds has a distinct character, they all have an exaggerated hip-hop quality to them, and they’re a great showcase for Cosials’ and Perrote’s irreverent senses of humor and riotous personalities.
For this era of Hinds, Cosials has handled the video editing, chopping away rapidly as early as the day after shooting while still exhausted from filming. In the process, she’s created a visual language for Viva Hinds. “The world has made us so self-conscious about every image we put out,” says Perrote. “Is this too sexual? Is this too serious? Is this too silly? We are all of it. It’s hard to not slowly fall into the vision of someone else who’s editing, who sees us in one of those boxes rather than in all of them. It’s been super amazing to know that CC was going to edit and absolutely control the image.”
“We have a motto for this new album: ‘We do what we can with what we have,’” says Cosials. “But I think it’s going to last forever. Any limitation, we stop seeing it as a limitation. It just spices things up a little bit.” FL
