Hinds Interview

Madrid band Hinds have recently released their debut album ‘Leave Me Alone’ with such high critical acclaim it’s enough to make any band at least a little arrogant, but not Hinds.

The four Spaniards are full of energy and excitement and a smile is never off their faces like a toddler on Christmas morning. They’re embracing the music world with open arms and the music world is welcoming them with numerous award nominations and outstanding reviews.

While in a smoking area of a bar in sunny Leeds I managed to catch two very enthusiastic and cheery members of the band, Amber (the drummer) and Ade (the bassist and singer).  After only starting gigging in the summer of 2014, the band is not yet without their pre-show anxieties “we still get nervous which is a good thing though I think and it doesn’t really change if it is a big gig or a small gig” Amber says. “I prefer smaller crowds though as it is more intimate, like when you’re on stage people are just right there and you can just sing and play to them, it feels a lot more comfortable.”  

After releasing their debut EP ‘Demo’ they not only attracted fans from their home country of Spain, but also attracted quite a large fan base from America, Europe and helped them burst on to the UK music scene for 2015. ‘Debut’ was supposedly fuelled by Sangria which doesn’t come as a shock when interviewing the band as alcohol seems to be a theme within Hinds when it comes to writing and playing music. I asked Ade and Amber what their craziest gig was and their answer was involving a time when they did a gig in Copenhagen “we had so long between sound check and the actual gig so we decided to drink a bit and we got so fucking drunk, it was the craziest and best gig ever”. Although Ade decided that it was the best gig ever Amber instantaneously laughed, almost chocking on the smoke from her cigarette and exclaimed to Ade that although it was her favourite gig it was also the bands worst gig to date. “We were so fucking drunk and it was so much fun but the sound we made that night was just so bad”.

The band have come a long way since 2014, they played numerous festivals in 2015 including UK festival Glastonbury and Internacional de Benicàssim which is situated in the province of Castelló in Spain. When mentioning the festival to Ade she couldn’t hold back her excitement thinking back to the festival with a smile appearing on her face interrupting her taking a drag of her cigarette. “It feels crazy the fact that we played Benicàssim, from visiting it for years to actually being on one of the stages in 2015, we couldn’t believe it.”

Hinds are a band, if not THE band, to watch in 2016 and are a breath of fresh air when it comes to European bands making themselves present in the American and British music scene.