Photos + Collages by Alex Hall
Whatever happened to feel good guitar music? Obviously it still exists, but sometimes it feels like you really have to dig to find the good stuff amongst all the rest. The bands who love to play and play what they love, and the fans who just want to listen to a little bit of rock and roll. Well— in the small unknown city of Paris, there is a band doing just that. Spanish Horses are a young group of four jamming together and making music with some humanity in it, and that’s something that feels scarce these days. The band is able to make great music because in the end, it’s a gang of friends who are just looking to have a bit of fun and that might be what’s missing in much of today’s music. So if you just want to have a little bit of fun, check out their 4 song EP ‘As She Rides By’ premiering today & get to know the boys better from our conversation below where I made them (+manager Lorenzo) squeeze onto my couch and entertain my dog.
Brittany: All right, you guys ready?
Spanish Horses: Yeah, this is our first interview.
Brittany: I’m so happy to be the first one to do it. Let’s start from the beginning: are you all from Paris or…?
Cyril: So I was born in Paris but my parents are Lebanese; first French generation in my family. I grew up abroad and moved around and I’ve been in Paris for two years.
Tom: I was born in Paris but my family is from the South of France and Cambodia, and I move around a lot and now I’m in Paris as well.
Albert: I was born in London, spent a few years in London but then came to live with my mother in Paris a long time ago, so I grew up in Paris pretty much.
Victor: I am from the North of France, super close to Belgium. I started moving around a lot when I was eleven. I moved to Paris two years ago.
Brittany: And how did you guys meet?
Tom: I met Cyril when I was 11, no… I was 12 years old in school in Dubai at a French Lebanese school and then were separated when we were like 14?…16? I moved elsewhere. He moved a bunch as well… he went to school in Holland and he lived in Portugal for a bit. I was begging him to join the band for like two years and he finally came to his senses.
(everyone laughs)
Brittany: We’re really glad you finally got there.
Cyril: I met Victor when I was 15 or 16 also but we were in different schools.
Tom: And I met Albert outside of Pigalle Country Club at an Ian F Svenonius show about 2 and a half years ago.
Albert: Yeah, we started chatting, can’t remember why but we became mates. I think we stayed out til about 9 in the morning the next day and starting hanging out since then.
Tom: Cyril, Albert and I were in the same band previously. We were in a band called Endorphin Transistor with another friend called Oscar and that band separated last summer.
Brittany: And thus Spanish Horses…?
Everyone: Yeah…
Cyril: And simultaneously Victor and I where in another band called Head Rush, which also separated last summer. So no more bands… so we became a band.
Brittany: So you all have been in quite a few musical projects?
Albert: Yeah.
Tom: For me it’s the second.
Victor: For Cyril and I it’s a bit more I think.
Brittany: Are you mostly playing in Paris or have you been able to get out?
Albert: Mostly in Paris.
Victor: We’ve played Montpellier.
Tom: Yeah that was great, we’re trying to go around Europe and conquer the UK at some point.
Brittany: Are you constantly writing music? What do you prioritize, writing and getting music out there or you guys wanna play shows?
Tom: It’s a sickness. We write so much but we rarely finish, but the stuff we finish is what we believe in the most.
Brittany: and you keep the stuff you don’t finish for later?
Tom: It’s all on our phones and voice recordings.
Cyril: That’s something that I really like and enjoy. We’ve played a couple of shows in Paris and every time we play a show there’s something new. So people who come back, there’s this one new song.
Tom: We’ve never played the same set.
Albert: We always change it up a bit.
Brittany: Are you using your notes app or handwriting lyrics or music?
Cyril: Personally I hand write if I have to write things, but most of the time I forget the songs and we will go to the practice space and we are mid something new and I’m like ‘yea yea…’ and I am playing the thing and Victor is always the first to call me out and say, ‘You’re not playing the thing’ and I’m like ‘no no it’s good!’ and Victor says ‘You have no idea what you’re doing.’
Victor: I can tell when you’re faking it.
Cyril: It took you a minute to figure that out, but yeah.
(laughs)
Albert: I’m terrible at writing lyrics.
Brittany: Is there an album that has come out this year that you guys really enjoy that you would recommend for the people reading this?
Tom: No.
Victor: Did the Fat White Family album come out this year?
Albert: End of last year.
Tom: Honestly I rarely listen to new music, it’s like a problem. I love going to gigs and shows though.
Albert: Seeing new bands is great…
Tom: You know who’s great? A band called House Arrest.
Albert: Yea they are banging.
Tom: House Arrest from London. We saw them play a show in Paris and it was, for me, a revelation.
Albert: Really good. Children of the Pope are really good as well. I think they are releasing some new stuff.
Brittany: Do you go to shows often in Paris?
Tom: Well the thing is… the music scene here is fucking dreadful.
Brittany: I didn’t want to say it…
Tom: I can tell you because we talk about this everyday, it’s so frustrating. I think bands in Paris are looking for adversaries while we’re looking for companions and co workers. People to work with and make good music but the music scene here is usually motivated by a lot of ego.
Albert: It’s like everyone is against each other… I don’t get it because you just cross the channel and you go to London, you see people in like seven different bands and you don’t have many rivalries in London. Everyone seems to be in the same boat fighting for the same cause. But here, for some reason everyone is trying to pit each other against each other.
Cyril: There’s a thing also in Paris where I think people play music but they play music as social currency. As to say I’m cool, I’m in a band.
Brittany: I think that’s international, that’s everywhere.
Cyril: It’s true, but there are very few bands that really care about the music they make. I know that in London there are bands that are like: ‘Okay, there’s that (social currency)’, but at the same time they’re trying to make really good music.
Tom: Obviously not everyone is like this, but there’s that and if you mix it with France’s terrible taste in music, it creates a really weird concoction of young people trying to make French Radiohead music. And also people… I’m not going to say that.
(everyone laughs)
Brittany: So are there any bands from Paris that you like to listen to or you play with or just friends of yours?
Tom: Sacha Gordon and The Weird Orchestra.
Cyril: There’s a band… they’re very mystical. Called Bryan’s Magic Tears. When they play it’s really cool.
Albert: I would say the same, I don’t really know.
Brittany: This is all secretly for me I don’t give a fuck about the readers.
Lorenzo (manager): They’re not from Paris, they’re from Montpellier but they played a show with us, Avalon Bloom.
Brittany: Do you like any venues?
Victor: We like to go to L’International, but it’s closed now.
Albert: They are re-doing it.
Tom: I used to really not like that venue at all because every time we played with my old group… you know how there are some venues where every time you play it you are always shit? That’s what we were, we were always shit every time we played. And then we started playing well there and then I started loving the place.
Albert: We did our first concert with the band.
Tom: Then we got around to knowing the people that worked there and the people that organized the gigs and it’s a beautiful place.
Albert: They are definitely the ones with their heads screwed.
Tom: They really got their heads screwed. They are fantastic. They bring artists from all around the world for us to see on a Thursday or Tuesday night. It’s beautiful to be able to walk in and see a variety of music. There is no other place in Paris, except for Supersonic.
Victor: But it’s a bit different, it feels like a factory. ‘Come play, we don’t give a shit’.
Brittany: So do DIY spaces exist here, is that a thing?
Tom: I’m sure they exist.
Albert: They do, on the outskirts of the city. But we don’t really go there.
Tom: We aren’t up to date with that.
Brittany: What about house shows?
Tom: I did one house show but like for somebody’s birthday.
Brittany: Yeah, well I’ve never been to a particularly big apartment here, so.
(everyone laughs)
Tom: Maybe on the outskirts, there are houses. But the thing is people are just not interested in music.
Albert: Guitar music here is seen as kind of like a gimmick.
Brittany: What is popular?
Tom: I have no idea.
(everyone laughs)
Albert: There’s a lot of techno events, that’s definitely got a bigger crowd.
Victor: Oh yeah for sure.
Albert: Than rock and roll.
Cyril: And in France, Rap and Hip Hop are definitely king, no question about it. And in terms of French music… I was talking about it with my brother today. It’s all thought and calculations, there’s no feel to it. Look at the way The Beatles wrote songs, they go with the flow and they continue writing the song. They don’t think ‘Oh, this is the note I played therefore I should play this note.’ In French music everything is calculated. In the French language everything is calculated. It’s ‘Frenchness’, it’s in the language.
Tom: It’s bullshit.
Albert: We had friends that were in the studio. They spent two days and were like, ‘yeah we recorded all the drum tracks, and that’s it.’ And they go back and its more like building blocks rather than something coherent.
Victor: Yeah, like with a metronome and it’s all rigid… we would never be able to do that…
Cyril: I can do that. Fuck you man.
(everyone laughs)
Brittany: My last question, a city anywhere in the world where you could play your first international gig, where would you go?
Tom: New York City!
The post Premiere: Spanish Horses ‘As She Rides By’ + get to know the band first appeared on Alt Citizen.