Hinds name their favourite punk songs: “Full of excitement”
I remember the first moment I heard Hinds very well. I was 17, in the final year of college, waiting for something different to happen. Waiting to go to university, waiting to live in a city so I could go out to gigs, waiting to be an adult, waiting for life to start in that melodramatic teenage way. “All I’m asking is for you to make a move,” they came singing, yelling out of my Spotify, perfectly capturing the feeling.
The other day, the band celebrated their tenth anniversary, sharing a sweet video tracking their process from two best friends playing guitars in their bedrooms to the beloved group they are today, playing on stages around the world. But what I love about their music is the remnants of that small room origin. Their works sound like songs made by friends, talking in their own unique language, capturing the relatable feelings of youth, womanhood, boredom and the search for fun. From the first piece I heard to now, I’ve hit play on them whenever I need a distinct soundtrack for shaking off the cobwebs and heading out into the world, looking for antics.
The DIY ethos and feel I fell for in their earliest tracks like ‘Chili Town’ and ‘Trippy Gum’ feels authentically punk. While the world is all too often reserved for all-male wild groups, kicking over amps and smashing up drumkits, Hinds embody the energy of the genre. Born out of a deep love for music, a desire for a shake-up and a determination to make music simply because they want to, their fun feeling and refusal to overthink their sound or lyrics capture the heart of it.
That’s reflected in their own personal music tastes, too. In conversation with The Line Of Best Fit, Ana Perrote and Carlotta Cosials both revealed eclectic tastes, mixing mainstream sounds of their Spanish childhoods with more underground cuts they found as they found their place amidst the music scene. “In general, liking this kind of music in Spain, you’re in a minority,” Perrote said. “The garage rock and indie music scene is pretty small and it’s mainly downtown, and I didn’t live downtown. So I saw and heard most of it from my computer, to begin with.” Their music taste, and especially their love for punk, becomes a tapestry of found sounds and tracks shared between the two as they became friends.
A key part of that puzzle comes in the form of Los Nastys, a group that encouraged them to keep going. “They are kind of like our big brothers, our mentors. They have seen us literally grow up as a band,” Perrote said, talking of the outfit as a key figure in the Madrid music scene they came up in. Picking out the hi-octane track ‘Holograma’, its jovial take on punk reminds Hinds of sun-soaked good times in the city and a distinct sense of determination. After seeing them perform, Perrote remembers being “full of excitement and possibility. We felt like the whole world was open to us and our friends in Madrid.” It was at that exact moment that the two friends decided to play together, tracing their origin back to this Spanish punk troupe.
For Perrote, her bandmate and best friend was a pioneering force for her music taste. “She was into all this older rock music,” she remembers, talking of meeting Cosials as “meeting this super cool girl” who hung out with groups and new music beyond her own sonic scope. Cosials was raised on it, picking out tracks by rock act Molotov as a sound of her childhood as her Dad would “play it when we were driving around in his second-hand 4×4 Range Rover.”
It’s a similar story for her love of The Clash, connecting the Spanish duo to the original British punk scene. “My mum was crazy about The Clash,” she said. “She lived in London when she was eighteen, and she was the punkest girl you can imagine. She was a squatter, and she had dreadlocks!” She picks out ‘I Fought The Law’ as a favourite, adding, “It’s kind of funny to me to see that carrying on from one generation to another.”
Hinds are students of all of these artists, including the garage rock outfit Strange Boys. “They have a very small repertoire,” Cosials said, “but they created a style, and they had something that a lot of bands are now kids of; they’re learning from what Strange Boys did.” Listening to ‘A Walk On The Bleach’ especially, it’s easy to hear where Hinds’ own sound found its footing, definitely running with the garage rock ethos that DIY is best.
Ten years on, Hinds have moulded my music taste in their shape, but long before that, they were crafted by a whole lineage of punk legends. Whether from their own local music scene or stolen from their parents’ cassettes, they’re simply another golden act in a long and vibrant history.
Hinds’ favourite punk songs:
- ‘Molotov Cocktail Party’ – Molotov
- ‘I Fought the Law’ – The Clash
- ‘A Walk on the Bleach’ – The Strange Boys
- ‘Gloria’ – Patti Smith
- ‘Holograma’ – Los Nastys
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